


tell me baby, do you recognize me?

by xocean



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Natasha & Avengers friendship, Natasha-centric, Other, Post CA-TWS, pre-AOU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 16:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 63,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4443038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xocean/pseuds/xocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're a liar." Natasha is shaking. "You're a heartless, lonely, lying murderer."<br/>He doesn't even blink. "We both are."</p><p>The Winter Soldier's game is up, and Steve's not letting him go this time. Enter the only person who doesn't want a part in this shitfest: Natasha Romanov. </p><p>Or, as James Buchanan Barnes remembers her: Natalia Romanova.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. black widow

**Author's Note:**

> I'm new to AO3 so do forgive any mistakes! Comments and criticisms are always appreciated. For comic readers: Natasha's character origins follow comic book canon loosely, but everyone else remain the same. Happy reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm new to AO3 so do forgive any mistakes! Comments and criticisms are always appreciated. For comic readers: Natasha's character origins follow comic book canon loosely, but everyone else remain the same. Happy reading!

When Natasha hears that The Winter Soldier had been captured, she is halfway across the world in Eurasia, deep in her new alias as Anara Aliyev in Kazakhstan. Anara is a simple woman who laughs at the alliteration in her name and sells tomatoes in the morning market every Saturday. It was not, by Natasha's standards, one of the most interesting characters she has created by far, but it was normal and didn't draw attention. Anara was liked but not loved, her neighbors said hello but never invited her for dinner. And that was exactly the way Natasha wanted things to be. At least, not until she wanted to move on to better things.

She spent her evenings inside, watching television or knitting (Anara had a penchant for knitting, the neighborhood would tell you). She kept herself up to date by the news, and by the underground communication network with what remaining contacts she had, set up the day she moved into that house. Natasha does this partly because she wants to know what's going on, and also so she can be ahead of the curve if something went down.

So when the news comes, that The Winter Soldier has been captured by Steve Rogers, Natasha turns off the television for a week.

It wasn't personal. Really. In fact, Natasha had gone the extra mile to pull in favors for Steve at Kiev - Kiev! - when he had wanted to go after the Soldier. And after working with Steve for that excruciating three days that resulted in the end of SHIELD, Natasha had started to realize that she might not trust the lies she's told on SHIELD's behalf anymore, but she would willingly follow Steve Rogers into battle.

But Natasha had stayed off that trip for a reason.

A full three days later, Anara receives a small parcel, wrapped in brown postage paper, slightly heavy, handed to her by a gawking, awkward young delivery boy who couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of her. Natasha flirts with him a little, just to maintain Anara's upbeat personality, and retires as quickly as she can into her house.

Natasha unwraps it carefully in her bedroom, curtains drawn, and when the paper comes apart, she lets out a strangled-half laugh.

"Son of a guy," she echoes Steve softly, running a finger down the sleek black tablet in her hands. She had no doubts that the back of said tablet would contain gold engraving with the words 'SI'.

She only hesitates for a little, wondering what to do with this little gift, and then she sets in her drawer and leaves it alone for the entire day. It was a Saturday, so Anara keeps to her schedule and makes her way to morning market, and makes pretty for her customers. The rest of the day was an uneventful Anara day, and she spends it just like Saturday - washing, cleaning, reading. Natasha goes through the motions, keeping in schedule right up to her bed time, at which point she turns off the lights, grabs the table from her drawer,, and puts in on the bed beside her.

A little after midnight, the tablet starts beeping softly.

Natasha is ready, holding it in her dark bedroom, and when she presses the button, the screen flickers to life and she comes face to face with Tony Stark.

"Black Widow! Woman of the hour," Tony says, a beatific smile on his face, "miss me?"

Stark has that cocksure grin on his face, and he appeared to be in his lab with his ratty band t-shirt and another tablet in his hand. Behind him, a faint movement catches her eye - but she relaxes once she identifies it as Dummy.

Natasha is thoroughly surprised to find herself wavering at the familiarity, and how easily she accepts his usual banter. She doesn't let it show on her face - does she ever? - and simply raises her eyebrows at him.

"No."

"Always a sweet, mild-tempered woman," Tony grumbles without acid, and without preamble, he launches straight into it. "You're wanted back here."

Natasha considers this as if she didn't already know that. "How did you find me?"

Tony rolls with the change of topic easily and snorts, giving her a skeptical look. "You left a couple of very convincing false trails," he wags the tablet at her disapprovingly, "that took JARVIS a couple of days to investigate, but it was a game of guesses really. Also, Anara Aliyev? You're into alliteration now?"

"It's a personality quirk." Natasha shrugs at him. "People love it."

Stark rolls his eyes. "I'm sure they do. Now, d'you know who else would love you? Fury would. If you came back." He let out a weary sigh and rubs his temples. "Look, Natasha, The whole place is gone crazy, you need to come back. Fury's driving me up the wall every day, there's only so much stalling I can do before I stab his eye with a screwdriver -"

Natasha had sat up straight. "Fury's not in on this? Just you?"

Tony pauses, gives her a strange look. "Well...  _yeah_ _,"_ he says, the 'duh' hidden in his voice, "this is a totally secure line. Unhackable. Encrypted." Natasha is still giving him that strange look, so he elaborates. "No one knows. Just you and me." He winks at her exaggeratedly.

Natasha is too blindsided to act like she is irritated. "I thought you... That you -"

"That I'm doing this on Fury's orders?" Tony shakes his head, mock-disbelieving. "Do you even know me Natasha, when have I ever done what Fury wanted me to do? Really, I'm almost offended. I thought we had a connection."

Natasha lets out a genuine, relieved laugh, rolling her eyes, and Tony's for-show smile turns into something a little more warmer.

He sets aside his tablet, with the air of getting down to seriousness. "Look, Fury  _has_  been barking up my lab every day, he wants me to bring you in. Actually, track your whereabouts is more accurate. But I thought someone who doesn't want to be found should be left alone." He eyes her furtively. "I'm sure you've had your channels, being the sneaky slinky ex-SHIELD spy that you are, and I figured, if you didn't come in when you found out, maybe you didn't want to come in at all."

Natasha's reports of Tony Stark after her stint as Natalie Rushman had been a thoroughly detached, clinical analysis of his personality. Her ending words, 'Iron Man yes, Tony Stark no' are now almost infamous throughout - well, what used to be SHIELD. She wouldn't ever admit it to anyone, but she kind of regrets not talking about the other things in his file.

It had come to her in the aftermath of the Chitauri invasion, when all that was left to be done was clean up after the battle. Natasha had kept her feelings strictly out of her reports - because that was what SHIELD demanded, a clear cut paper that determined if he was a threat or an ally, but watching the man fall out of the sky, pulse half-dead and not breathing, negated her reports - and her view - of Tony Stark, selfish narcissistic, occasionally pervy, and annoying man. It made her accept what she had always gathered under the surface - Tony was simply a man who put up a front to hide all of the pain underneath - below that, below the hurt and Howard Stark, there was kindness.

So Natasha gives Tony a real smile. Not her undercover, hello-how-do-you-do smile, but a real,  _thank you_  one.

Tony notices, stumbles visibly, that confident, cocksure demeanor wavering.

"Who else knows?" She asks him, mostly because she knows how awkward he gets when confronted with genuine emotions.

"As of now, no one," Tony tells her, eyes flicking around in a  _did that just happen?_  way. He hesitates. "I was planning on telling the rest of the gang after this, if you were okay with it." Natasha raises her eyebrows. Stark rolls his eyes, "Earth's mightiest heroes, the gang, the Avengers." He waves a hand flippantly.

This catches Natasha's attention. "Everyone's there?" She doesn't mean to sound left out, and she's confident nothing in her tone or face gave it away, but she's taken aback at the feeling.

"Depends on 'there', and 'everyone'. Bruce never left," Stark says, counting off, "He's been living with me since... well, since." Natasha does not miss that he's greatly unwilling to talk about the Chitauri invasion. "Thor's not on Earth, but he sends a message sometimes, I think he's showing up this week. Barton drops in every now and then, but he's staying here now mostly 'cause of the situation, and Cap's got his own his place but he's kind of here every day. Also due to the situation." He eyes her again. "I won't tell them if you don't want me to, Scouts honor."

"You were never the in Scouts," Natasha sighs, and swings her feet over the side of the bed. "You can tell them. If you want. Only them." She narrows her eyes at him. " _Not_  Fury. I - I'm not ready to be on the radar yet."

Stark has his hands up. "Of course, of course, total secrecy, will inform the team in our next slumber party. Are you coming back?" Natasha's face goes blank and Stark backtracks. "Just, you know, I have people, I could get you here in about six hours, tops.  _Way_  better than your local airline."

Natasha is already shaking her head. "I'm not coming."

"Got it." Tony pushed off the table he's been leaning on, sensing the conversation was ending. He hesitates again. "I ah, the male half of the Avengers is unbelievably untolerable," he says in a loud, obnoxious tone, "I'm getting tired of waking up and seeing Barton's face every day. Bruce is nice, but that's only because I don't see him half the time, and Cap is Cap, but given the current situation he's moping around a lot more." Tony stares at her, and Natasha goes from wondering if he's gone mad to suddenly understanding.

She was missed.

"Listen," Stark says, with finality in his voice, "Once I tell them about this they're gonna make this happen again. They meaning Steve. You know how he is about Bucky Barnes," he tactfully ignores the way Natasha's face tightens at his name, "and you're kind of the only person everyone's relying on now."

Natasha shakes her head. "Tony..."

"I know you're not coming back, but consider this." Tony holds up a hand. "Barnes' memory is all sorts of fucked up, and he doesn't recognize Steve beyond 'the man on the bridge'. Bruce tried some things, we put him in therapy, Steve spends the entire day with him trying to bring his memory back and the only thing that came out of this whole ordeal was two words."

Natasha steels herself, because she knew, she already knows what's coming next.

If he notices, Tony ignores it and presses on. "Natalia Romanova."

* * *

The tablet starts beeping one day later, and Natasha contemplates, for one whimsical second, throwing it in the trash and getting the hell out of Kazakhstan. She knows who's calling and she knows that this was when she would cave, because honestly, even if she hadn't gone through that shitfest with Steve and Fury fake-dying and all, who could resist Captain America?

But some part of her knew that it was time to go back, so she only half-reluctantly pressed the button on the tablet. Immediately, Tony's voice filled the silence.

"I told you! I told you this would happen so my hands are clean, my conscience is clear," He waves his hands around for her to see.

Natasha eyes the group of people clustered around the screen, ignoring the heartwrenching look Steve was giving her, and nodded casually. "Where's Clint?"

"Fury has him working on something," Bruce says. He rubs his glasses on his sleeves and puts them back on. "Hi, Natasha."

"Is that 'something' me?" Natasha teases, because it feels good to see all of them after so long. Bruce chuckles and nods. "Hey, Bruce."

"Oh sure,  _he_  gets a nice greeting," Tony grumbles from the back.

Natasha is pretty sure Bruce sticks his tongue out at him, but she doesn't really focus on that, because Steve was looking at her like someone had kicked his puppy, and Natasha was the only person who could make it better. And let her make one thing very clear: Steve's facial expressions are not to be taken lightly. He's somehow capable of expressing every spectrum emotion to its full capacity.

She's barely holding back a sigh as she greets him. "Steve."

"Natasha," Steve launches immediately into the pleading, "We need you back here. Please. I'm sure Tony has told you everything, and it's only getting worse day by day, and all he remembers is you." Steve tries and fails to hide the accusing, slightly hurt tone in his voice, and the blush creeping up his neck told her he knew. Bruce and Tony are avoiding eye contact. "I wouldn't bother you if I could handle it. And I  _can't_."

It wasn't that Steve didn't already look upset to her. The three days they spent together months ago let Natasha learn his every tell, when he was barely keeping it together, when he wanted to punch something. Steve wore his emotions on his sleeve and it didn't take an idiot to see he was at his wit's end. Still, Natasha had considered asking them the courtesy of handling it themselves. And she knows that it's a cheap shot, it's a trump card, because if she asked, they would extend that courtesy to her and leave her alone. Yet it was the way Steve's voice had cracked on the 'can't' that made her gut twist and resolve break.

She swallows in dry mouth. "Tony."

Tony's answering voice is apprehensive. "Uh, yeah?"

Natasha pats the travelling bag that she'd already packed the night before. "Six hours, you said?"

Bruce and Steve look slightly confused, and Natasha understands - and appreciates - that Tony hadn't told them everything they talked about.

Tony himself grins. "I'll make it five."

* * *

Natasha isn't surprised that it was Barton who came to get her.

"Clint."

"Tasha."

They grip each other's forearms, squeezing hard and and long. Natasha and Clint did not do physical affection. One got to being two of the most deadly spies not by expressing feelings and hugging it out, even though that was what they wanted to do. So they held on to each other's hands, strong and dependable, and Natasha thought vaguely about how she missed his face, and Clint took in her face like he hadn't seen her in years. It wasn't love, at least; not romantic love. But there was something very ancient and human in the way they both sought each other out.

The ride back to Stark Tower is quite pleasant, Natasha thinks, as Clint fills her in the things she missed.

"- And Fury sends me on this wild goose chase, where I was like, Sir, we're not gonna find her just like that," Clint is saying, piloting the jet. It was one of Tony's, and it was very fast indeed. Natasha was in the co-pilot's seat. "And he looks me right in the eye and goes, for your sake, I hope we do. I mean, what the fuck?" Clint wasn't very happy being sent to track down Natasha. "I missed the video call and everything. If I'm gonna go on a wild goose chase, I'm gonna do it in comfort. So I stole Tony's jet," he says conversationally.

"I imagine he took it well." Natasha amuses herself thinking about how Tony would have reacted.

Clint waves a hand, supremely unbothered. "Eh, he was pissy, yelling at me and telling JARVIS to blacklist me from the tower. Good thing I did it, though, 'cause right after you came through on the video call, Tony just radioed me and told me to divert to Kazakhstan." He glances at her. "I didn't expect you to agree."

"I wasn't planning on it." She confides in him, because he was the only person she could ever give anything to. "Its just - Steve, you know, with that look on his face."

"Oh, you're telling  _me_. I've been living with that all this time. I don't know how he does it, but he appears to have physically manifested the word 'sad'. I'd walk into a room and he'd be there, staring off into space." Clint's words are flippant, but his tone turns concerned at the end. "He was a mess, Tasha. Looked real sad, wouldn't eat much, just spent all his time with Barnes. Bruce threatened to limit his visitation hours and that's when he pulled himself together. A little."

Natasha lets out a strangled noise. "This.  _This_  is  _precisely_  why I don't keep friends." She grinds her teeth. "This is why a mark is a mark, and a job is a job. This is why we shouldn't have done shawarma, Clint. When have we ever revolved our decisions around the emotional wellbeing of other people?" Clint glances at her, and she makes amends, rolling her eyes. "Aside from each other."

"I think that comes after fighting for our lives in a team that, surprisingly, clicks well after an incredibly rocky start."

"I didn't think we'd still be a team," Natasha admits, "I thought our tensions were too high. Steve and Tony... Bruce, I thought he would want isolation."

"So did I, but look who we're on first name basis with?" Clint asks rhetorically. "Couple years ago Tony's last name would only come up when he's done some shit as Iron Man, but a few days ago he came in and yelled at me to either laundry or buy new clothes. Bruce has the time of his life introducing technology and the internet to Steve, who's beyond interested in that stuff. I kinda think he's a little disappointed there's no flying cars yet." He shrugs. "It's crazy. It's fucking crazy." Clint pauses, thinking it through. "But it works."

They're both silent, digesting this together. They don't talk about it anymore, maybe because Clint feels like he's emoted too much, but Natasha stops because she doesn't want to get more attached. She turns her mind to more clinical things - the task at hand.

"And Barnes?"

Clint glances at her again. "If we're crazy, he's batshit crazy."

Natasha suppresses a smile.

"You know the deal. Bruce put him into therapy, tried some hypnosis thing, but whatever Hydra did to him, it seems to have worked too good. Tony and Bruce put their heads together and came up with this blasting..ray thing." Clint rolls his eyes. "It didn't work, or should I say, it only kind of worked. They brought back his memory, but a very tiny, old piece of it. You."

Natasha is so grateful for the way Clint says it, not how Steve had said it accusingly, and Tony had said it warily. Clint simply states it like it was another fact. The sky is blue. Water is wet. Bucky Barnes is a brainwashed assassin for Hydra and he remembers Natasha.

"He remembers Natalia Romanova," Natasha feels the need to clarify.

"Uhuh." Clint is silent for a while. "The Red Room?"

Natasha's body tenses automatically at that, and she has to mentally shake herself into remembering she wasn't there anymore. She was on Tony Stark's private jet. "Probably," she says as casually as she can. "I need to talk to him before I can confirm anything."

Clint has noted all the little ways Natasha reacted to his earlier words, and has tucked them away for the future. He doesn't bring it up, instead, he lets out a sigh. "I'd say good luck, but I honestly think it'll work. We've tried interrogation tactics, psychology, even Bruce and Tony's science thing. He hasn't spoken to anyone since saying your name that one time."

"How does Steve feel about this?" Natasha asks carefully.

Clint glances at her sharply. "He's seems glad that there's a way to get Bucky talking, but he's not one hundred per cent thrilled. I think he's..." Jealous? Hurt? Peeved? The words hang in the air between them. "...Tired," Clint settles.

Natasha rubs her temples. This wasn't going to go smoothly. "Bozhe moi."

"Amen." Clint snorted.

* * *

The first person Natasha sees as she and Clint exit the jet is Bruce Banner waiting for them, which surprises her because she expected Tony to be here to yell at Clint for stealing his jet.

"Good to see you in person, Natasha," Bruce says in that mild-mannered, charming way of his. Natasha smiles and takes his offered hand. He nods at Clint and they set off together, but Clint seems to share Natasha's thoughts.

"Uh, where's Tony?"

Bruce leads them to a car and they get in. Natasha recognizes Happy at the wheel and they exchange nods, and start moving to Stark Tower.

"Tony's acting as a distraction," Bruce informs them.

"Fury." Clint and Natasha say at the same time.

"He got wind of you coming here about ten minutes after our call," Bruce nods at Natasha, "He was insistent on bringing you straight to him but Steve kinda put a stop to that. Tony's holding him up at the lab, I assume by just being Tony." Clint laughs at this. "Fury seems... determined to get to you before you get to Barnes." Bruce's tone is questioning. "Tony annoyed - ah, tried getting information out of him, but we're guessing he doesn't want you to be spilling classified information to anyone."

Natasha is unwilling to answer, but Bruce is looking at her in a purely concerned way. "The Red Room," she says, and Bruce's face tightens.

"Well." Bruce visibly tenses up, and Natasha and Clint are already on alert, hands on their guns, but Bruce shakes his head and goes back to normal. "Sorry. We all kind of guessed that that was how you and him.." he gestures vaguely. "I... was caught off guard."

Natasha exhales, relieved, and Clint shakes his head, "Gave me a heart attack, man."

Bruce smiles impishly at him. "That was mean, sorry."

Natasha shoots him a sly look, not missing that little line of his, and he smiles back at their inside joke.

"So we're heading to the Tower now, and hopefully Tony's managed to clear Fury out of there," Bruce says, peering out of the window. "He's set up a room for you, Natasha, but I think Steve will want to talk with you first."

"I'm looking forward to that," Natasha says, tone light and airy. Clint snickers, and Bruce doesn't miss out on this.

"He's working through some things," Bruce offers. "I imagine this whole ordeal is really draining for him."

"I understand," She tells him, because really, she did. Or she would try.

It never ceases to amaze Natasha, what a calm, mild-mannered, actual  _nice_  guy Bruce Banner is. His reports presented him as volatile and intimidating, but Natasha had learned over the years to not trust the reports so much. Bruce was one of the most self-aware, humble person Natasha has ever met. And Natasha deals with liars and murderers on a daily basis, so that says a lot. Not that Bruce doesn't have blood on his hands, but each one of them did, and if anyone was going to point fingers for that, they'd have to start with Clint and Natasha for their kill count.

The car slides to a stop and Bruce gets down first, and holds the door open for her. Natasha tries not to stare at the giant building mournfully as they quickly step inside, the better to avoid any photographers who were always lurking around the tower. A blast of air-conditioner hits them as they enter the lobby and Natasha breathes in the familiar clean, expensive smell of Stark Tower.

" _Welcome Doctor, Katniss, and Ms. Natasha_ ," JARVIS' disembodied voice greets them.

Clint glares at the nearest security camera as Bruce and Natasha hide smiles. "Okay, I'm getting you back for this," He turns around, complaining. "JARVIS, I thought we were buddies."

" _Mr. Stark programmed my changes after you took off with his jet this morning,_ " JARVIS explains smoothly. " _I will reprogram my settings as soon as I can._ "

Clint grins around at them. "See? We're buddies."

" _In the meantime, Mr. Stark has instructed me to direct you to the Avengers' lounge. If you will enter the elevator._ " A panel of steel slide aside, revealing an elevator, and they piled in together. Natasha grips her bag securely as they lean on separate walls. The elevator music is set to some blasting AC/DC song.

The numbers rise, bypassing 10, 20, 30, easily, and Natasha simply watches the movement. Her head was reeling inside. She had thought about this before, and had decided that she was going to play dumb to everything. But in the car she'd discovered that she couldn't - wouldn't lie to her teammates. She could have easily lied to Fury, because she knows that it would go on record and can be used against her should the situation arise, but to people who she's trusted to guard her back? Fought alongside with?

This was going to be harder than she expected.

The doors slid open and they exit together.

"Avengers' lounge?" She questions.

"It's like a communal place." Bruce answers, Clint leading the way. "Sometimes we eat together."

"It's in the middle of our rooms, yours will be on this floor too," Clint calls behind him. "Everyone's on this floor."

Everyone? Natasha is about to open her mouth when the questioned answered itself.

A single room, at the end of the corridor. Pale blue curtains are drawn on one window, but the other panel is uncovered. Someone tall and sturdy, standing, is blocking her view. As they advance to the end, Clint making to turn left, that someone shifted, and there was a bed behind, and Natasha catches a glimpse of silver metal.

It's like a car crash - she can't stop herself from looking, even though her gut tells her exactly what lies beyond. The figure on the bed is glaring, a dark look on his face, and he shifts his eyes up just as Natasha and Bruce are about to turn the corner.

They look at each other, and it feels like an eternity has passed. Bruce and Clint have stopped walking, and James Buchanan Barnes is staring at her. Slowly, as Steve turns around inside, he opens his mouth.

And all the three of them can hear his yelling.

* * *

"Natalia!  _Natalia! NATALIA!_ "

The Winter Soldier's screaming grows louder by the minute, and Natasha is growing weary underneath Steve's conflicted gaze. Bruce has cleverly excused himself under the guise of looking for Tony, and Clint had attempted to escape in a similar way before catching the tension in Natasha's frame. She didn't know what she had been expecting when Steve came out, wearing a harried look on his face, but she had never imagined he would be standing in front of her, trying and failing to speak.

Natasha didn't know what she was doing coming back here, cards on the table. She had come because Steve had asked her to, yet now he was gazing at her in a mix of helplessness, yet hurt was written all over his face. Natasha would break the silence, she had no trouble with confrontation, but she wanted him to break it. Why? Well... they were friends.

"Are you well?" Is the first thing Steve Rogers says to her.

"I'm fine," Natasha nods. Behind her, Clint pretends to be absorbed in his coffee.

"The flight... did Fury...?" Steve stumbles, and Natasha feels a wave of sadness rise over her. Steve is broken, she can clearly see, the one person he loves from his past and that person did not remember him. She decides to go ahead and fully be there for him.

"We got here no trouble, Rogers," she quirks a smile at him.

Her smile seems to be the thing Steve has been waiting for, and Natasha watches, fascinated, as the entire tension drains from his frame. His shoulders relax slightly, and he smiles at her, that genuine All-American smile, and they both step forward at the same time, their hands reaching out - they both plant a small kiss at each other's cheeks. Natasha feels something unknot inside of her - glad, that their bond formed with such fragility during the SHIELD fiasco has not dissipated one bit. She feels rather than see Clint stilling behind her, and knows she has some explaining to do - but she isn't worried. This, too, is platonic.

"I'm glad you're back," Steve tells her seriously, leading her to the sofa. "I've been trying all I can to bring him back, but he's just..."

"Steve." Natasha brings him back from his despair with a firm tone. "Tell me how you got him. What happened?"

Steve leaned back. "Sam and I went looking for him with the Kiev files you gave me. We spent about 2 months doing stakeouts, monitoring any places he would go to. The lead you gave us confirmed that he wouldn't go back to Russia, so we figured he'd still be sticking around here. Apparently, he defected when HYDRA picked him up," Steve explains to Natasha's raised brow, "There's a bounty on him back there."

This last part is said with an undercurrent of anger, and Natasha doesn't tell him that the bounty for The Winter Soldier had been out for decades, only increasing with every year. Steve shakes his head. "Anyway, we were mostly in motels, nothing fancy. Didn't want to attract attention. One night in Brooklyn, we went out. Sam said I could at least pretend to get drunk," Steve laughs a little, "Halfway downstairs, Sam forgot his wallet. He runs back up, opens the door, and sees a flash of silver getting out our window."

Sounds like The Winter Soldier, alright. Natasha realized, "He was tracking  _you_."

Steve nods wearily. "We spent months on the road, trying to find him, and it turned out he was on our tail the whole time. Sam threw a fit."

Natasha and Steve share a smile at that. "And then?" She prompts him.

"And then it was a simple matter of setting the bait. We figured he wasn't following us to do harm, because there were plenty of chances where Buck - he could have easily killed one of us." Steve's eyes are sunken and dark, Natasha realizes - how long as it been since he slept? "So if he didn't want to kill us, he just wanted to see what we were up to, right? I don't know. We didn't know." He rubs a hand over his eyes. "We repeated the same scenario that happened that night, about one month later. The room we stayed in conveniently had no windows - but it had a skylight we knew Buck- he would use. I stood outside, and Sam took his wings to the skylight. It was a fight, but I think he just tired out." Steve looks up at her, and his eyes are pained. "And then we called Tony."

"And Tony generously - but with a small amount of apprehension - set them up in his tower with 24/7 medical access and, way better living arrangements than that shady motel you picked." Tony's voice says suddenly, and they both turn around to find him and Bruce walking in the lounge.

Steve offers him a dim smile. "And I'm grateful. Seriously, thanks, Tony, I know I say it a lot but -"

"This puts you on strike two, Cap, you thank me one more time and your ass is out of here," Tony says without heat, and sits down opposite Natasha. Now that Bruce and Tony are here, Clint joins them, eyeing Natasha. "Good to have you back, Natasha."

"Thanks for the ride," Natasha reminds him demurely, hiding a smirk when Tony immediately turns to Clint with a glare.

"You turned JARVIS against me man, we're even now," Clint says, scowling at Natasha.

"You stole my  _jet_. I need at least three more paybacks before I count us even," Tony tells him, and turns back to the group. "Well, now that the team's all nice and settled - wait - except for Thor of course - huh, I knew something felt out of place," he glances around the room, and eyes a big caramel-colored sofa, obviously the demigod's usual seat.

"He'll be joining us later this week," Steve helpfully explains, "He went to see Jane."

"Ah, young love." Tony tugs at his collar, and opens his mouth again.

Sensing an inappropriate remark coming on, Bruce hurriedly speaks first. "So, are we all up to speed here?"

Steve nods. "I just filled her in."

"What do we do now?"

There's silence in the group, during which the screaming, which they all had conveniently ignored during their conversation, fills the quiet. It's her name he's yelling, over and over, and Natasha is loath to admit that it's starting to drive her crazy. She dropped that name for a reason.

"Tell Natasha about the thing you and Tony did, Doc," Clint breaks the silence with tact.

Bruce nods hastily. "So uh, HYDRA used electric brainwashing methods on him - at least, that's what we're guessing."

"An _extremely_ educated guess." Tony puts in. 

"Right, because his MRI scans show no visible damage to his nervous system - apart from his arm - but his brain signals are significantly altered." Bruce casts a glance at Steve, who's staring at the coffee table. "No brain damage, the serum has seen to that, but -"

"Serum?" Natasha leans forward.

"He appears to have been subjected to a watered down version of Steve's serum," Bruce explains, and Natasha feels a knot tighten in her stomach. Some of her worst suspicions are being confirmed. "The healing factor, strength, possibly even his aging. We're not sure."

"Just like how we're not sure about me." Steve's tone is mild. 

Bruce chews on his bottom lip and continues. "His brain signals are different. Altered. When he first came in he was violent and aggressive, no communication whatsoever. Once we got him to settle down," Natasha notes that Bruce is skating over the details, "We tried to get him to talk. Tony brought in therapists."

"Physical therapy as well. All high-end, paid off for secrecy," Tony flips a hand, "no use."

"So we tried to reverse some of the damage using non-harmful, super watered-down gamma rays. It was a theory at most," Bruce puts in with a frown, "we were just trying out anything that would work." 

"SHIELD was finding its grounds and Fury was on our asses," Clint says dispassionately, "Not to mention Capitol Hill and the WSC were on the prowl after the whole HYDRA shebang." 

"It was a theory," Bruce reiterates. Natasha notes his reluctance and files it away for the future. "It sent him into a kind of waking coma." 

"He went catatonic." Steve suddenly enters, raising his head to look directly at her. "For about two days. I could touch him and he didn't respond. Until he did, and then he just kept saying your name." 

All eyes are on her in varying degrees of emotions. Natasha shrugs. 

"I need to talk to him," she says to everyone, but her eyes stay on Steve. "I can't tell you anything until I do." 

"But you can help him?" Steve asks, blue eyes shining hopefully.

"I don't know," Natasha says honestly. "I have my suspicions, but I don't know if anything would work. For all I know, he only remembers me because I was his mark once." This was a reaching statement and she knew it, but Natasha was feeling a disproportionate amount of reluctance to discuss the Red Room with them. If any of them notice this, they don't react. 

"But you  _will_ help him." Steve says, but this time he sounds more stubborn than hopeful. 

Natasha steels herself and makes her decision right then. "I'll try."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 preview:
> 
> 'Natasha takes about ten minutes to figure out that The Winter Soldier was faking it.'


	2. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and support! I do want to make apologies for how short this chapter is, but it had to go the way it did, haha. Happy reading, and as always, I love your feedback. <3

Natasha brushes her thumb against the little black pad on the door, and after a scan and a beep, it slides aside, revealing her room for the next indefinite amount of time. She steps in curiously, looking around at the simple, monochromatic touches to the interior design. Tony had told her that he'd designed it with her in mind, but he had left it as vague as possible so she could fill in the blanks herself, if she so felt like it. Natasha likes the dark grey walls, and the tasteful Dali piece on the wall, but she especially loves the huge French windows at the side. They open out to a stunning view of New York, and are currently transparent, although Tony had told her she could change the settings to make them opaque.

Natasha likes light. She likes bright, open spaces. She knows the irony of this, that her line of work doesn't allow for big and bright spaces, but whenever she could wrangle it, she relishes it. She walks around the room, checks the en-suite bathroom, runs a hand along the grey steel of her queen-sized bedframe, and finally drops her bag on the floor beside it. Sitting down on her bed, she smooths out the soft white sheets. Tony has, as always, outdone himself. Even if her room looked more simple than lascivious, it was all done tastefully and with quality.

Natasha leans down to unzip her bag, then her back stiffens.

"You like it?"

She turns around to Steve, who was standing in her open doorway, watching her with a small smile. Natasha relaxes, gives him a smile, because she had expected him to come.

"It's nice," she says, turning back to her bag. "Hate to think of how much it would have cost Tony, though."

"Oh, he doesn't care." Steve walks in slowly, looking around as well. "Wait till you see our floors."

Natasha pauses in the act of pulling out her clothes. "Floors?"

Steve looks surprised, then positively mischievous. "Tony built each of us our own floors. Rooms, kitchen, bathroom. It's like an apartment."

"Wow." Natasha is surprised, and a little impressed. "Gotta be huge."

"Look at the size of your room." Steve gestures around. "Imagine this in an entire floor."

Natasha blinks at the imagined space, and then again at what it must have cost him. "I  _was_  wondering," she admits, sliding open a panel that revealed rows of clothes hangers. "Why everyone would have agreed to live on the same floor. Clint likes his privacy."

Steve agrees, sitting down at the edge of her bed. "I don't mind it so much. But we decided it was best for everyone to be in close proximity after Bucky came in."

Natasha hmm's, knowing well enough that this is what he came here for. She hooks a white t-shirt onto a hanger, waiting for him to broach the topic. Steve hands her more clothes from her bag, and they work in silence for a while.

"Thanks for coming in." Steve says quietly, after a while. "I know you didn't want to." He hands her the Kevlar bodysuit at the bottom of her bag, and she places it on the nightstand instead of the closet.

"Steve," Natasha sighs and lowers herself down beside him.

"I didn't want to bother you." Steve looks at her, and he looks tired and withdrawn. "It's just that Bucky remembers you. And I... I have to help him. I owe him."

"I'm going to help you," Natasha tells him with conviction, because he just looks so goddamn defeated. "I told you I would, and I will. But I need you to understand that it might not work at all."

Natasha has had enough time to think about this. Even if her suspicions were true, even if he did remember her from their Red Room days, there was a high possibility that that was all there was ever going to be. Natasha didn't know HYDRA brainwashing methods that well, but if they've managed to imprison one of the most prominent Howling Commando members, and turn him into a killing machine for not one, not two, but  _seventy years_? The damage might be too intense to repair.

Natasha doesn't doubt that Steve already knows this. And she also knows that she was currently Steve's last hope. But she didn't want him to keep his hopes high.

"I know," Steve says, rubbing his face. "I know." He exhales sharply. "I just - I have to try. He's the only person..."

"Okay," Natasha soothes him. "I know. I understand."

Steve looks at her, a wild lost look in his eyes. "No, Tasha. It's - I keep thinking about few months ago, I keep thinking about the way he shot Fury, long-range, inside my own apartment. I look at him, and I want him to be okay, but I keep thinking about the way he threw you off of his back. And that he almost would have shot you - killed you - if I hadn't been there. How hard it was for me to stop him."

"None of it is his fault," Natasha tells him, feeling an echo of deja vu in her words, but her voice isn't as convincing as she wants it to be. She, too, remembers trying to kill him - that wire in her hands,  _so close_  to garroting him, and how he'd simply pushed the wire away with little struggle. "He wasn't Bucky Barnes then, Steve. He was HYDRA. For many years."

"After fighting with me." Steve says quietly, and then it just  _hits_  Natasha.

Steve's old guilt hadn't vanished after finding Bucky - it had simply intensified, tens and hundreds and a thousand times more. She already knew that Steve was weighed down immensely by guilt for what had happened to his best friend, but she had thought it would have lessened after actually getting him back. Steve wasn't just torn apart by Bucky's state - it was killing him, thinking that everything that's happening to him - the memory loss, the screaming, the pain - it was all Steve's fault.

Natasha really takes a look at Steve then - hunched over, shoulders down and eyes downcast, that blonde hair rumpled and shining dully in her bedroom light, and it hits her, exactly how much guilt and pain Steve's carrying on his back.  _A modern_ _Atlas out of time_.

"Steve," Natasha says now fiercely, "it's  _not_  your fault. I could give you a hundred reasons now why it's not and I know it won't get through to you -" Natasha and Steve are holding hands, gripping each other so tightly and she doesn't know who reached for who but she holds on, "- but you need to understand that it's  _not_. It's not on you. It's on Zola and Pierce and every other bastard in HYDRA."

Steve's eyes are a blazing, shining blue as Natasha holds his gaze. "We've got him now," she says softly, "we're gonna do everything we can to get him back. But you - you need to work on your guilt. You owe me."

Steve's miserable expression gives way to confusion with a quirk of his eyebrow.

"You think I don't know what you were trying to do on the helicarrier?" Natasha reminds him evenly. "When you just let him beat you half to death? Steve, I spent hours looking for your body."

His eyes are wide, and Natasha can practically see the apology forming on the tip of his tongue. She steels her gaze, masking her confusion and panic underneath a mask of iron-faced blankness.

"Tasha, I -"

"Save it." She strokes his knuckles to soften the blow, then gets up to shut her closet. "It's done. Doesn't matter."

She doesn't want to think or talk about it, that innate sense of betrayal she had felt when she and Fury and Sam and Hill had called and furiously yelled his name, over and over, into their comms, all while he was getting beaten up on the carrier. And then later, leading the search parties because " _Captain America is not dead,"_  Sam had insisted stubbornly, and getting that call to relief on her comm from Hill. " _We found him_ ," she had said, tone clipped and tired. " _He's at the riverbank._ " After a pause, as Natasha and Sam had scrambled from their other search trails to get to the river, Hill had added a relieved, " _He's alive._ "

"I didn't mean -" Steve sounds anguished. "I just wanted to - Natasha -"

JARVIS interrupts him, sounding mildly apologetic. " _Captain, I apologize for the interruption, but Dr. Banner requests your presence in the patient's room._ "

Steve hesitates. "Do we know what for?"

 _"Master Barnes appears to be having a seizure, Captain._ "

Natasha hides her wince. "Guess we're up," she says, leaving her room with Steve hot on her heels.

"What happened? Is he okay?" Steve demands, even as they just walk through the door.

Bruce is standing by the Soldier's side, with some papers in his hands, and the Soldier's eyes are closed in what appears to be a deep sleep. Natasha keeps her gaze trained firmly on Bruce.

"Mild seizure," Bruce explains shortly, busy reading through whatever it was. "I've sedated him for now."

"Why did he - how -" Steve begins.

"Must be all that screaming," Bruce scratches the scruff on his chin. "Tony's off to recalibrate the gamma rays in case we need to bring him back again."

"Again?" Natasha quirks an eyebrow.

"Sometimes, after his.. uh, he has panic attacks. And then he has trouble remembering where he is and why," Bruce explains after a glance at Steve, "The rays usually help jog his memory a little."

Steve's frowning again with that morose, brooding air that Natasha was starting to be familiar with. "So, just the usual."

"I'm afraid so. You said you wanted to be informed whenever it happened -" Bruce starts apologetically, but Steve waves his hand and offers a wan smile to him.

"No, thanks for calling me, I do want to be informed." Steve's mouth bunches up a little. "I'm just... disappointed, I guess." Natasha bumps her elbow on his lightly, and he gives her a wry smile in return.

"So this is a common occurrence, Doc?" Natasha asks.

"Pretty much," Bruce says, and then he looks between her and Steve, and visibly resolves something. "I think you need to talk to him as soon as possible, Natasha." He shuffles through the papers in his hands, then pulls one out and holds it out for Steve and Natasha to see. "This is a scan of his nervous system taken earlier today, and -" Bruce digs out another paper and holds it out as well. "- I took this one just now. The phrase, 'shot nerves' comes to mind."

Natasha privately agrees.

"I don't mean to rush you," Bruce says to her, "Nor am I putting anything on you, but he kind of screamed himself into a panic attack just now. It stimulated the seizure." Bruce reshuffles the papers in his hands. "He heals from everything quick enough, but it doesn't repair the damage to his nerve system as fast. It's in his best interest that we keep the attacks to a minimum. And his brain scans show that the stress has tripled since he saw you." This last part is said somewhat apologetically.

Natasha nods. There's not point putting this off, she understands, it was happening whether she liked it or not. Steve, however, is silent. He's obviously trying not to pressure Natasha into anything, but the glimmer of earnestness in his eyes are ever present as he looks at her. Behind Bruce, the Soldier sleeps on.

"Okay," Natasha concedes. "Let's do it today."

"Today?" Steve and Bruce say at the same time, Steve with some degree of wariness, Bruce with surprise.

"He's going to starts screaming again when he wakes up," Natasha points out resignedly, "It'll just trigger another attack. We might as well start now and prevent the damage."

Bruce looks to Steve, who looks at Natasha for a while, and then nods. "Today," Steve agrees slowly, "I'll get the others. We'll standby in case - well, in case."

"I'll alert you when he wakes up." Bruce offers. "Might take some time."

Natasha nods again wearily, and realizes for the first time, how tired and jet-lagged she feels. "I'll be in my room."

They leave Bruce in the Soldier's room, and Steve parts from her after telling her to get some rest. Natasha assumes he's off to rally Clint and Tony, and distracts herself imagining them showing up in full battle armor, just for her little visit with a brainwashed assassin. She wonders, again to distract herself, if she should show up in her Kevlar, too. It would certainly pull the team look together - maybe even turn out to be good PR photos for the Avengers. Of course, it wouldn't really work, no when the actual media's darling, Thor wasn't here, but they could try.

Natasha forces herself to keep her mind blank as she lies down and dims the settings on the windows for some shade. Her mind is reeling from all the events that have happened today, and she wishes more than anything to be Anara Aliyev again. Anara would be cooking right now, Natasha thinks vaguely as her eyes droop, and there would be no one but her in her little house.

An hour later, JARVIS wakes her up gently.

" _Ms Romanov,"_ the AI stirs her from her sleep, " _Dr Banner requests your presence. Master Barnes is awake._ "

* * *

All in all, it takes Natasha about ten minutes to figure out that the Soldier was faking and fooling them all.

Currently, the Soldier is twisting around in his bed, fighting the restraints and the handcuff that ties his metal arm to the bedpost, and he yells Natasha's name with more urgency and panic, even as he's staring right at her through the window.

Natasha's feet are frozen to the ground, and there's nothing more she wants to do than to just walk away from Stark Tower right now. But the heat of Steve's gaze is hot on the back of her neck, and Clint is looking at her the way he does when they are Hawkeye and Black Widow on a mission, ready for orders and on standby. She would just have to say the word and she would be out.

"We're on standby," Steve repeats himself. All of them are dressed normally, except Steve has his shield with him, Clint his bow and arrows, and Tony with his silver bracelets on his wrists.

 _Steve Rogers_ , she reminds herself, and it's only the thought of him carrying her out of that exploded bunker after that wretched conversation with Zola that makes her relax her face and step forward. The door slides open to meet her unfaltering stride, and the moment she steps in, the Soldier stops his yelling, and the door closes them off from the others.

It's the oddest thing that happens, Natasha feels more than she thinks, in the way the Soldier's body just kind of  _relaxes_  against the bed. He stops fighting the restraints, and his body language is fractionally calmer and less aggressive than before, but the thing that catches Natasha's attention is the way his face relaxes from panicked to something more… sullen. It's a minute change, and disappears almost immediately, and Natasha probably couldn't have caught it if she wasn't, well, her.

Natasha's still by the door, and she's hyper aware that she was being watched by her teammates, so she takes slow strides towards him. He follows her movement with his eyes, watching her raptly, and Natasha feels her guard shoot up. The Soldier was in restraints, bound to the bed in an uncharacteristic grey hospital gown with bare feet – the picture of vulnerability, yet with all the coiled power and grace of a mountain lion. It does not escape Natasha for one second that this was a highly skilled, one of the best assassins in decades that was lying in front of her.

She impulsively decides to break the silence.

"You called for me," Natasha says with calm in her entire body language.

She's five feet away from his bed, and she pours a glass of water from the jug on the bedside table to disguise the fact that she didn't want to be near him. He doesn't answer her, and Natasha's guard is zinging with an uncomfortable feeling that she can't put her finger on.

The glass in her hand, she turns to him.  _You called for me. Didn't you?_

Natasha needs more from him. She suppresses the increasing panic in the back of her mind and decides to jump ahead of all the caution and fuck  _taking it slow_ , and goes in with one of her aces.

Natasha's trained eye is on every facet of his face when she says, "I'm here, James."

His reaction is minute and immediate. His head shoots up to hers, his blue eyes are wild for just a second, and his mouth tightens very briefly in a way that Natasha knows well, and she has to grip the glass in her hand to anchor herself, because she has finally located the uncomfortable feeling she's been having.

 _He knows_ , Natasha's mind is hammering away. That sullen, sulky look on his face – that  _recognition_  when she said his name – they were all fooled. He knew, and he remembered – and the way he looked at her when she first walked in – she just  _got_ it – he had looked like he had gotten what he wanted, yet for some reason he wasn't very happy about it.

Natasha was striding back away to the window, and she meets Steve's alert gaze with a solid  _trust me_  in her face. There's steel in her stomach and she draws the curtains shut.

"JARVIS, make sure they can't hear us," she murmurs, turning back around. "And turn off the CCTV."

" _I'm afraid I can't do that without authorization from Mr. Stark, Ms. Romanov_ ," the AI replies her.

"Fine. Keep the video, but mute the audio." Natasha hesitates, but she knows a loophole from her time as Natalie Rushman. "Seal the footage to my express permission."

" _Very well, Ms. Romanov_." JARVIS' tone was hesitant.

The Soldier's eyes flick up to the ceiling and then back at her throughout her conversation with JARVIS. All traces of recognition and sullenness are gone, and now he looks wary and slightly scared. Natasha feels a wave of confusion and panic in her mind.

"For privacy," she explains carefully, walking back to him. "So we can talk. Just you and me."

He glances almost imperceptibly to the ceiling. God, he isn't lost or stupid or  _anything_. He is perfectly aware of what was happening – and Natasha has thousands of questions in her mind about this, but at the moment she wants to make sure he thinks that he has her fooled.

He hasn't touched the glass, and Natasha gestures to it.

"It's just water," she says. "You must be thirsty, after all that yelling you did." Natasha very slowly slides the glass out of his hand, and he lets her, watching her move. She tips the water into her mouth, just a little, and swallows to show him that it was safe. He watches her drink, and then his fingers twitch towards the glass. Natasha is about to hand it to him again when he speaks.

"I can't." He tugs his hand upwards, his hand uselessly hitting the restraints. "Can't move."

"Would you want me to…?" Natasha gestures with the glass, all grace and helpfulness.

He eyes her for a moment, then gives an unwilling nod.

So he trusts her, Natasha's mind is racing to file all the details as she slowly moves the glass towards his mouth. He trusts her enough to let her near him. She keeps her eyes on his mouth as she tips the rim over, watching the water flow into his mouth and aware that his eyes were keenly studying her face. Natasha maintains a relaxed face, and vaguely thinks that she could be doing this for Clint if she closes her eyes and pretends enough.

He takes a sip, and then more and more, and Natasha is tipping the entire glass' contents into his mouth. Her gut twists just a little bit at the way he drinks it like a starved child, and soon the glass is empty and she's reaching for the jug for more. He looks between her and the glass, and Natasha has to take another sip to assure him that it was safe. They do this two more times, until the jug is half-empty and he's satisfied.

Natasha sets the glass down and settles into a chair by his bed. It's probably Steve's chair, and he probably spent hours in it, trying to talk to the Soldier. Natasha imagines Steve telling him stories about the Howling Commandos, about their life in Brooklyn, and how much he wants him to get better.

"So." Natasha breaks the silence. "What's going on, James?"

His reaction to the name this time is infinitely more controlled, and Natasha notes that he's changing his behavior to match what he knows of her. He's definitely wary of her, and she can't help but be curious as to why he made such a scene, yelling out her name, when he ultimately didn't want her to be here.

He looks down at himself, then back up at her. "I'm compromised." He thinks for a second. "They caught me."

Natasha can't decide how to play this, but she needs answers more than she needs to be offensive. "Who's they?" She keeps her tone light.

He looks at her, a little blankly this time. "Steve. And the man with the wings."

"You know Steve?"

Natasha can practically see his guard go up. "He told me," he says a little defensively. "He told me his name is Steve. He comes and talks to me a lot."

Natasha sees through his lie like it's a window, but she makes like she believes him. She is about 90% confident that he didn't  _know_  Steve, he  _remembers_  Steve, but she lets him lie to her.

"What does he talk about?"

"Stories." He glances at the curtains, and then back at her. His tone is a little sharp now. "Do you work for him?"

"No, I don't." Natasha considers, pausing. She wants to see just how far he thinks he has them fooled about his memories. "We work together."

His expression doesn't change, but he looks away from her, at the wall to his right. Natasha's trying to keep up, her mind coming up with hundreds of theories when he looks back at her. "I was your teacher."

Natasha feels like her breath is knocked out of her.

"Natalia?"

Her mind is reeling with the change of topic but she forces herself to focus. "Yes. You were." Natasha forces the clipped tone out of her voice. "You remember that?"  _You remember me?_

When his face goes blank, his eyes taking on that thousand yard stare Natasha's seen Clint's eyes do, she somehow knows that he isn't faking it this time. This was real.

"I taught you." He sounds like he's remembering it now. "I taught you how to fight, and…" he trails off, mouth slightly open. Natasha realizes that his mind has gone, and she hovers uncertainly for a second.

"James," She says sharply.

"You're very good," he says, voice and eyes completely unfocused. Natasha gets up and leans over him, and his eyes slowly slide over her face. She can smell his clean, sterilized scent, and notes the little split ends of his long hair. He stares at her, completely blank, for a second.

And then he says, "It was cold," and then all of a sudden Natasha has her hands locked around his throat because his metal arm is closed around her bicep and tightening minutely.

"JARVIS, tell Hawkeye to stand down," She says through clenched teeth. Natasha knows that Clint would have scaled the vents the second she closed the curtains.

There's a pause, and JARVIS awkwardly breaks the silence. " _Agent Barton refuses to leave the vents, Ms. Romanov._ "

"Stand down, Hawkeye," she says loudly now, but her tone is uncertain because the Soldier's eyes are still unfocused and his grip on her hand is getting tighter. Natasha takes a deep breath and slowly relaxes her grip on his throat. Gently, she brings one hand up to cup his jaw, and she leans in. "James. It's me.  _Vash Natal'ya._ "

"Natalia." He repeats her name, still unfocused, and then rougher, a little more angrily, " _Natalia_."

Natasha hears the faint sound of an arrow being notched, and she knows she only has seconds. "It's okay. James, you're okay." His grip on her is like iron, and her free hand is inches away from - "You need to focus. Come back."

"Come back?" He repeats, but this time the anger is unmistakable. He looks right at her. Natasha tugs on the syringe hidden behind the bottom part of her shirt. "You  _left_."

His metal fingers dig on her bicep painfully and Natasha stabs the syringe into his arm with all the force she can muster. His pupils dilate, and then his grip relaxes, and Natasha sags back into her chair.

She lifts her finger, presses the comm in her ear. "We're secure."

Immediately, Clint drops down from the ceiling, and Tony and Steve burst in through the door. Steve looks between her and James in bewilderment, and Tony has his armor on with the faceplate up. He's looking at her the same way Clint is: strangely, like they don't know what to make of anything. They're all tense, evidently prepared for a fight, Natasha assumes JARVIS had alerted them.

Natasha doesn't have the energy, but she gestures at the syringe. "I brought backup."

Tony snorts. Steve looks worried.

"It's safe," she adds to reassure him, "Just a mild sedative."

Clint presses a button so his bow shrinks down, looking exasperated. "What the hell happened, Tasha?"

She's already shaking her head, standing up. "Debrief after I take a nap."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 preview: 
> 
> "I had my doubts, Natasha. And I had people to protect." Natasha pivots with a roll of her eyes and Fury continues, unbothered. "I had my reasons. And since we're talking about this now, I'd like you to know that I did what I did to keep your scent off of Barnes' trail."


	3. liberation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, updating frequently and all! Following updates might not come as fast. Happy reading, and please do leave me your feedback! Your reviews make my day.
> 
> EDITED 6TH AUGUST '15: Just made a couple of changes to spelling and grammar errors, as well at the end of the chapter where it's supposed to be 'five days', but for some reason they all say 'four days'. Nothing major, don't worry! Such is life without a beta -sigh-

It would seem that the universe is currently conspiring against Natasha getting even the tiniest bit of sleep, because about ten minutes after she lies down on her bed, JARVIS wakes her up in a mildly apologetic tone.

" _Director Fury is waiting for you, Ms. Romanov,_ " the AI says, as Natasha opens blank eyes to the ceiling. " _I'm afraid I could not keep him away._ "

"That's alright, JARVIS," she murmurs, pushing herself off the bed, because really, it was alright. It's not like Natasha had drifted off into deep slumber, anyway - she had mostly turned around in bed and forced (and failed) her mind to empty itself. She couldn't stop thinking about James. What game is he playing? The panic attacks and the way he just drifted off was very real - it couldn't have been planned. And he remembered her.

That memory sent a jolt through Natasha. He remembered her, as in he remembered the Red Room her. And then he had accused her of leaving.  _What was that?_  A rhetorical question, of course - Natasha knows exactly what he means. But it doesn't explain anything.

But she doesn't have time to think about him now, Natasha reflects irritably, not when she has her former director on her tail.

"Tony, I thought you were distracting him," she accuses as she steps through the lounge's doorway.

Nicholas Fury turns away from the windows to stare at her. "He tried."

Natasha's steps do not falter, and she presents him with a bland, unapologetic smile. "Nick."

"Natasha." Fury nods at her. Behind him, Tony is rolling his eyes. Steve, Clint and Bruce are nowhere to be seen.

"... no respect for private spaces," Tony is hounding Fury, sounding annoyed. "My guests usually call ahead before showing up."

"I used the front door," Fury says, unbothered.

"Oh that's right, thanks for showing up unwanted, at least you walked through the door."

"I was addressed as Eyepatch by your AI, Stark." Fury says this professionally, ignoring the way the corners of Tony's mouths were twitching at this. "I consider us even."

"Well, yeah, great, now you've seen her and she's not some holographic projection I created to drive you crazy, nor is she being held hostage, although how could I possibly have done - ?" Tony waves a hand. "Here she is, safe and sound, so feel free to -"

"While I'm glad to see Natasha safe and  _not_  being kidnapped," Fury interrupts in a long-suffering tone, "I'm not here to collect your dead body, which is what would've happened had you attempted it anyway. I came here to have a private word with my former agent, if she will so have it with me."

Tony glances at Natasha, who resignedly nods back at him. It was time to get this over with too, Natasha decides, and anyway, Natasha had heard plenty of lectures from Fury last time, and now she isn't even working for him.

"You kids have fun, don't break anything, or you're paying for it old man," Tony warns Fury and exits the room. There's a beat of silence between Natasha and Fury.

"Well?" Natasha provokes, heading over to where he was standing by the windows. She doesn't meet his eye, and they both turn to stare at the view outside the window.

"You know I'm gonna ask it, so I'm gonna get this out of the way right now. Will you come back to work for me?" Fury questions.

Natasha keeps her gaze trained on the skyline outside the window. "Did you ask Clint?"

"I did."

"And?"

Fury crosses his arms and looks out of the window as well. "He's sleeping on it."

"Hm."

"Well?" Fury looks at her.

"I need to think about it." Natasha doesn't know what she wants, not now, anyway.

After a pause, Fury says, "Well, alright then, I suppose you're busy with other things now," And there's no mistaking the sarcastic betrayal in his tone.

Natasha bristles visibly. "You don't have the right -"

"To expect one of my longest confidantes to come back with me?" Fury counters.

"You lost that right the second you let me think you died, Nick," Natasha asserts evenly.

There's a pause in which both of them refuse to look at each other. Fury eventually turns to Natasha, although all he gets is her stubborn side-profile.

"You  _know_  why I did it," Fury intoned quietly. "One of the few people I trusted turned around and ordered a hit on me. I couldn't trust anyone."

"Except Steve." Natasha turns to look at Fury. "You trusted Steve and I'm supposed to be your longest confidante."

They look at each other, and although this entire conversation has been carried out so far without heat, Natasha feels something like anger inside of her. Which is ridiculous, she tries to remind herself, she had let it go after Maria had brought them to see him in that awful hospital bed.  _She'd let it go_. She'd thought, it had been a necessary action, and she had focused on the mission.

Except it wasn't so easy to trust Fury now, not when her personal trust in so many people - in SHIELD - had been unceremoniously shattered by HYDRA. Natasha had felt like the rug had been slipped out underneath her feet, because she had thought that she was going straight. Especially after the Chitauri event in Manhattan, Natasha had thought that she was starting to find her place on the good side for once.

Fury finally spreads his hands in front of her. "I had my doubts, Natasha. And I had people to protect." Natasha pivots with a roll of her eyes and Fury continues, ignoring it. "Am I sorry that I didn't trust you with that information? Am I glad that after what I did, you still worked with me to bring HYDRA down? Of course I am." Fury stares at her impassively. "But I had my reasons. And since we're talking about this now, I'd like you to know that I did what I did to keep your scent off of Barnes' trail."

Natasha's spine has stiffened. She had, on some occasions, suspected that Fury knew, but she had decided to cross that bridge when she got there.

"I'm not going to thank you." Natasha drawls, casual as she can be.

"I don't expect you to," Fury replies. "How much does your team know?"

"Not much," Natasha admits. "They have guesses. That's about it."

Fury heaves a sigh. "Your file is declassified after that fuckery at the Triskelion. I'm not sure -"

"Nothing's on it," Natasha interrupts urgently. "I made sure when I dumped it online. There's only the bare minimum of info on me. I erased it." Even as she says it, it sounds like a child repeating something inane over and over again. How much could she have removed in those vital seconds that she had with Pierce in front of her?

"You did," Fury confirms, "But I'm afraid those aren't the only files out on you. The KGB have their own, and so did HYDRA. A lot of people don't like us now that we've outed them, Natasha. You need to be more careful." Fury pauses. "Or come clean."

Natasha doesn't reply. She can't imagine coming clean to anyone on her team, much less the world. It's already bad enough that Fury and Clint know about her past.

"Which brings me to why I'm here today." Fury continues.

"What, you didn't come over to harass me to come back to work?" Natasha mutters.

"That was my secondary motive," Fury replies her impassively, but there's a faint smile on his face. "But I'm here to talk about Barnes."

 _Aren't we all_ , Natasha thinks darkly.

"More to the point, I'm here to warn you. We kept track of his movements, but we don't know where his loyalties lie. At the moment, it seems to be with himself. So I need you to be careful with what you disclose to him." Fury glares at the window. "Specifically, about your connections with him and the Red Room. I'm sure I don't need to remind you this, but if word got out about your past, we're gonna be dealing with a lot more shit than we already are."

Natasha wants to laugh. She hadn't chosen anything that happened to her, but she was going to get burned for it anyway. "I'm not  _disclosing_ anything to him. I'm just here to - to -"

"Right," Fury says sarcastically after an awkward pause. "You just do that. In the meantime, be careful. We don't know how much is out there but -"

"Tony knows, I think," Natasha says suddenly, unbidden, and as she says it she realizes that it's been in the back of her mind for some time. "I'm pretty sure Tony knows." He would have hacked into SHIELD the day she brought him on as a consultant. He would have seen everything. And if by some chance he hadn't done that, the information dump online would have been a pretty good window for him to look into.

Fury doesn't disagree, which more or less confirms Natasha's thoughts. "I think," he says slowly, "That it might do some good to have them as backup." Natasha turns an incredulous stare on him. "Capitol Hill wants you, I'm not gonna lie. You make one slip up and it's end game for you. You need the support."

"That I won't get from you?" Natasha smiles beatifically at him.

Fury barely manages an eye-roll. "I'm not here as Director, nor am I here on behalf of the government. In some parts I've come to warn you." He gives her a look. "As a friend."

"But that's not why you've come here at all," Natasha points out, because she knows him, and she knows he doesn't do house calls just to tell her to be careful.

Fury crosses his arms, stares out of the window. "The WSC's got wind of Barnes being on the loose. I'm trying to hold them off but they can be relentless idiots when they want to be." Fury bristles. "You've got about five days with him until I have to turn him in. If he gets his memory back by then, he might be able to walk away from this." He pauses.

Natasha's jaw almost drops. "Five days? Nick, that's - we don't even know what we're dealing with."

Fury shakes his head. "I'm doing everything I can. I've left Barnes alone because I know we can't do anything than Stark and Banner can. But I'm running out of excuses."

"And even if he gets his memory back? What then?" Natasha feels despair coming on. "The WSC is still going to want him."

"If you can get James Buchanan Barnes to come back to the present," Fury says with steel in his tone, "Then we will be backing him up every step of the way. He's a liability for now, but we treat our war heroes right." Fury's jaw works for a second. "And he is a war hero."

 _Great._  Natasha wants to be touched by Fury's words, but all she feels is dread. "And I suppose you won't be telling Steve this?"

Fury's almost smiling when he holds out his hand to her, preparing to leave. "I leave that matter in your very capable hands, Natasha."

* * *

Tony has a dining room in the floor below their current communal floor, and it comes equipped with a very capable chef and up-to-date stainless steel stoves and ovens and so on, or so Clint tells her, but due to the situation these days, they tend to get take-out and group in the small kitchen-cum-dining room beside the balcony.

"Sometimes there's pasta, when Steve isn't busy moping in Barnes' room, because Tony refuses to, quote, 'be sucked into that whirlpool of negative energy'," Clint tells her, as they head together to the balcony. "One time when Thor was here, I got to whip up this giant batch of carbonara because he insisted we should have a meal together."

Clint's tone is slightly longing and makes Natasha smile. "Tony doesn't let you near the kitchen?"

"Says what's the point if he's hired someone to do for him. Can you believe that?" Natasha can, but Clint's indignant and he likes to cook, so she simply snorts. "And anyway, we don't even use that floor. Or the chef, for that matter." Clint pauses. "Well, I'm not really complaining about that."

"Less choices." Natasha understands. For them, it was simpler to be given about five options and being made to choose from it, rather than having literally everything as an option and picking from there, which is what Tony, Thor, Steve or even Bruce would be amiable to. "So what's for dinner tonight?"

Clint eyes her speculatively. "I told Tony you wanted Chinese."

Natasha purses her lips, raises an eyebrow.

"I want Chinese." Clint backtracks.

"You're lucky I like you," Natasha shakes her head, smiling.

They reach the room by the balcony and it's simple, just a big round table in the middle with chairs, a fridge in the corner, stove by the counter, which is piling with mugs and a half-filled coffee pot. It's empty, so Clint gestures and they head out to the balcony. The glass doors slide open and immediately, a gentle breeze ruffles her curls, a little cold. They walk to the edge, Natasha leaning on the railing on her forearms, and Clint expertly pulling himself up to sit on the railing, legs dangling over the edge. Natasha has long given up asking Clint to be more careful, and he would be, anyway, so she takes in the night view of Manhattan. It's all lights and shimmer and the white noise sound of traffic underneath them. It's strangely calming.

"You gonna go work for Fury?" Natasha looks at Clint.

He shrugs. "I can't decide. You?"

"Can't decide," Natasha echoes. "On one hand, it's a job. On the other..."

"It's a pretty shitty job." Clint exhales sharply. "This whole thing with HYDRA, and Pierce, I never saw that coming. And to be honest... I'm thinking about leaving." He glances at her sideways. Natasha doesn't react, because she was kind of already expecting this, but she wouldn't admit that it still stung a little. "I'm thinking about Laura, Tash. I'm thinking about my kids, and the farm, and..." Clint jumps down, mirrors Natasha's pose on the railing. "I'm just wondering how many more hits I can take before I see the end."

"Clint," Natasha says sharply.

Clint shrugs again. "It's true. I'm not like you." He smiles a little, nudges her elbow with his. Natasha doesn't find this as funny. "And I have a family. It's honestly pure luck that I've lasted this long without them being found out."

Natasha agrees. A farm on a land, kids and a wife? When Clint first told her about the first child years ago, her first reaction had been to call him an idiot. Not for wanting it, not for having done it, but because of the ramifications. If Clint was caught in the line of duty? How many dangerous missions had they taken together? Who would answer to Laura, his children?

And then he'd asked her to be their godmother and she'd realized it would be her.

"It's a good decision." She tells Clint, showing her support. "You deserve the break. Laura would be so happy."

Clint laughs, not humored. "I haven't decided anything," he admits. "I was going to, right after SHIELD collapsed, but..." He shakes his head, looks at her. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Barnes?"

"I'm trying not to think about it yet," Natasha offers, and Clint laughs again. A second later, they both stiffen and look around - and the door opens and Bruce and Tony pile in with quite a few cartons of food in their hands. And then Steve follows in behind them, smiling in greeting, and there's even more food in his bigger hands.

"Steve's a supersoldier, Clint eats anything and everything, and Bruce is technically eating for two," Tony explains at Natasha's raised eyebrow.

Bruce shrugs, settling down. "Guilty."

Clint comes back from the fridge carrying a six pack of beer. He distributes it around, efficiently coordinating with Steve who's passing around the food as well. Natasha puts herself between Bruce and Clint, a kind of human shield against Steve's wrath, which she was sure would follow when she delivers Fury's warning to him later on. They dig in immediately, and for a while there's no talking as they exchange chopsticks for beer every now and then. After a while, when half of the food is gone and they're kind of sated, leaning back, the conversation picks up.

"Thor called," Bruce starts, "He's dropping by tomorrow."

"Thor has a phone?" Natasha wants to know, or mostly to distract them from the debriefing.

"Jane does." Steve reaches for another carton of food. "Thor's more... uh, challenged."

"He's not really into  _Midgardian phones_ ," Clint explains in an excellent imitation of Thor, "Says Asgard has more advanced ones."

Natasha glances at Tony, who's predictably scowling.

"I'll show him," he states, determined, "I've made a new prototype for the Starkphone.  _I'm_  not even used to it."

Bruce and Clint exchange smirks, and then Steve leans forward without that light smile on his face and Natasha knows there's no more distractions she can egg on.

"Natasha?" Steve says, and she can feel the light atmosphere drop down, just a little bit. "I think we can debrief now."

She nods at him and decides to throw Fury to the sharks. "There's something else we need to discuss." The team sits forward a little, listening, albeit still with beers and food in their hands. "Fury came with a warning from the WSC. He gave us five days, maximum, before he needs to turn Barnes in."

Steve's eyes drop down, but otherwise the general reaction isn't very emotional, and it takes Natasha a second before she whips around to glare at Tony.

"Steve made me do it," Tony blurts out, looking guilty, but there's something else in the way he looks at her. "I just listened in on some parts, I swear, don't kill me."

"Really, Tony," Natasha's tone is lofty but there's an urgency in her mind. "Did you eavesdrop on the entire conversation?"

"Just the end," Tony says, and there's a hard edge to his voice that means he understands her question. He hadn't told them everything. "Just that part about the five days."

The look they share barely reaches past the bantering glares they usually shared, but there was a whole world of meaning in it. Thankfully, Clint is too busy draining his bottle, and Bruce is listening intently to Steve who's saying something that Natasha should probably tune into. Now.

"I can't say I didn't expect this," Steve says grimly, staring down his chopsticks like they had personally offended him. "I guess I should be thankful Fury's helping out so far."

"Any and all help from Fury's behalf will be because it benefits him or his organization," Tony says darkly, then adds, "no offence."

Natasha and Clint both shrug.

"Well... Fury or not, it still leaves us in a bit of a predicament if the WSC wants to take him in," Bruce says, taking off his glasses.

Steve's shaking his head, hard and determined. "I'm not going to let that happen."

There's a brief pause, in which everyone digests this statement. Natasha is the first to recover.

"You're gonna take him and run?" She leans forward intently.

Steve sets his chopsticks down and crosses his arms. "If he's still the way he is now - I can't let them take him," he says with finality. "If they do - and let's all be honest with each other here - Bucky's never gonna see the day of light again. They will imprison him."

"Steve, the kidnapping and the brainwashing, the torture - we can prove it," Bruce says earnestly.

"It's not going to be enough," Steve is adamant. "The second we bring up the brainwashing they're going to take him away and lock him up. Run a ton of tests to see how he's the way he is." Steve flexes his hand, and the next part comes out a little softer. "They did it to me with all those tests. I have some autonomy, to some point it was an option to me." Steve looks up at them. "Bucky's a war criminal. They won't give him a chance. And the second a doctor or a nurse steps the wrong way and ticks him off..."

There was silence as yet again, everyone digested this. Natasha couldn't say that Steve's fears were paranoid or unfounded - it's exactly what would follow, especially with that bionic arm of his. And judging by today's events, setting him off was all too easy.

Natasha notes that the longer no one refutes him, Steve's face is drooping, his eyebrows scrunching and he's retreating into that sadness inside of him, and she wants to break the silence but she just doesn't know how to -

"Listen," Tony saves them, a little wildly, "There's five of us. Right? Six when Thor gets back. They can't get Barnes out past us."

Steve seems to break out of his reverie a little, but it's to shoot Tony a wan smile. "I can't - I won't ask you to do that for me," Steve meets everyone's eyes now, "I understand that what you're doing now is already going above and beyond for me. It means a lot. But no one here will break any federal laws for me."

"Aw come on, Cap - You gonna deny us a little bit of good old-fashioned law breaking?" Clint tries to lighten the mood.

Steve laughs, but he shakes his head stubbornly. "It's not happening, so everyone put it out of your minds. If this goes southwards - it'll be on me. Not any of you."

"You don't have to plan so far," Natasha finally says. "We might be able to get him back."

All eyes turn to Natasha, and she knows she's walked into this herself, but this is a mission she had willingly accepted, albeit a little reluctantly. And Red Room or no Red Room, she didn't want Steve to become a fugitive again.

"I think," Natasha says slowly, gathering her thoughts so she can present an accurate, condensed report to her team, "We need to start treatment on him for extreme PTSD, first. He doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble remembering - he knows you, Steve," she tells him, and watches his blue eyes light up a little.

"Really?"

Natasha nods. "He told me that you sit with him. That you tell him stories."

The joy in Steve's face almost immediately gives way to surprise. "He talked to you?"

"He doesn't talk," Bruce objects.

She blinks at them. Even Tony and Clint look awed. "Yes," she contradicts them, a little impatient. Natasha is feeling slightly cornered. Why was this such a huge thing? She waves her hand. "He talks, you said so, he said my name -"

"Only that," Steve interrupts, "That was the only thing he's said so far. And after. Apart from the yelling."

She's not sure what to make of this - it only makes her more wary, more - scared? Not scared. She's so, incredibly wary of this. She looks around at them, trying not feel accused, and Clint comes to her rescue.

"It's good, right?" Clint's nodding. "He's talking, that's a great first step!"

"It really is," Bruce is in earnest now - his curiosity seems to be purely medical.

"See, Cap," Tony says in rallying tones, "It's only day one. We'll get him back in no time."

"Five days days," Clint corrects.

Tony scowls at him. " _In no time_."

"We were debriefing," Steve says listlessly, although there is a smile on his face. Natasha has noted all the little heartbreaking changes on his face, that Bucky wouldn't talk to him yet he talked to her, but she powers through, playing oblivious.

"So - PTSD," Bruce says, "You think?"

Natasha nods, glad for the change in topic. "There was an incident. He was... remembering something, and then he drifted off. Thousand yard stare." Everyone stills at this, and Natasha remembers that all of them have been in a warzone one way or another.

"Bring up the tapes," Steve says, "Bruce doesn't know what happened, and I kinda want to see it, too."

This was the moment Natasha's been dreading for, but she steels herself.  _It might do some good to have them as backup_ , Fury had said. But at what cost? She holds her breath as Tony commands JARVIS to bring the feed up, projected on the wall behind them, and then - it's all quiet.

"No audio?" Bruce asks, frowning.

Natasha watches herself circle the room slowly, watches James eyes stay on her like he is the prey and she the predator, and she realizes one thing - the entire audio is muted, even when she first introduced herself to James.

Tony casts her the barest of bare glances, and shrugs at Bruce. "Must be something wrong in the cameras. I'll look into it later."

The men collectively jerk back as one when James snaps his metal hand around her arm, and it's only through the playback that Natasha is able to appreciate just how quick and deadly the entire thing was. She watches herself like it's an actress in a movie, the way her own hands wrap around his throat so quickly she almost misses it, and the way James' metal arm is straining against the handcuffs to pin her arm down. She appreciates now that his flesh and bone arm is strapped down, tight, because she can now see just how much he's struggling to get free. If it wasn't for the restraints...

"What did he say, Nat? We need audio," Steve says distractedly, as Clint drops down from the vent, "Tony, can you fix it now?"

Tony looks at her helplessly. Natasha shakes her head to reassure him. She can pay her dues.

"Thanks, JARVIS," she says out loud, and the AI stops the feed. They turn back to her, Steve with pure curiosity, Bruce a little more professional, Clint wary and Tony still looking helpless. For better or for worse, they were about to hear some things about her that very little people knew. And, well, if she was being honest and a little sentimental, Natasha thought wryly, there are worse people she could be telling this to.

"Okay," Natasha takes a deep breath. "There's some things you need to know. About me." She takes another deep breath and her fists are balling themselves. "It'll help you understand things a little better."

"Natasha?" Steve asks, and he sounds so goddamned concerned. Clint's eyeing her intensely, and Tony's trying his hardest not to make eye contact. Bruce just looks extremely confused.

"Okay," she repeats, and then she leans forward and her hands are gripping the edge of the table because she  _needs_  them to understand, dammit. "You  _need_  to - you  _must_  understand that this is - it's very, extremely -"

"Tasha." Clint says, a word to calm her down. Everyone's looking very worried, suddenly.

"This can compromise me," Natasha almost snarls out, and it's boggling her mind how hard this was, how terribly difficult it was to give them this piece of her that she has locked up, hidden away with extreme pains. "Do you hear me? Do you  _understand_?"

Clint's looking alert and tense, and Tony's basically staring at the ceiling right now. Steve's eyes continually flick down to her knuckles and back up, and she realizes she's clenching the edge so hard her knuckles are a blinding white.

She takes deep breaths, mainly because Bruce looks terribly aghast and she doesn't want to set him off. The last thing they needed was for their giant green ally to make a guest appearance at this godforsaken dinner.

"I understand," Steve says, soothing and calm. His voice is gentle and calming, and Natasha wonders vaguely that for a man so big and strong, Steve could be gentle when he wanted to be. "Natasha. Don't strain yourself. It's okay."

"It's not okay," she tells him, and she feels so helpless and so, so tired, "You need to know. I - The Red Room -"

"We know," Steve soothes, steady and calm, "I know. It's okay. Don't do this right now." His chin is dipped low, concentrated. "Don't do this if it hurts. It's okay."

Natasha gives up and looks around at Clint, because surely he understands - he would explain, he would know what to do. But Clint's staring at her, intense.

"Next time, Tasha," he says slowly. "We don't need to do this now."

"The debriefing -"

"Can wait," Tony finally enters the conversation, although he is still avoiding eye contact. "I think we need to get Bruce calm, first."

They turn as one to Bruce, who has his eyes closed and his hands clenched around his head. Without thinking, Natasha's hands drift to where she has a knife hidden under her shirt, and everyone else is on guard, as well.

There's an awful, tense silence, in which there's no other sound except Bruce's occasional, anguished gasps, and no one wants to speak for fear of setting him off. For one wild second, Natasha thinks she sees his skin turn a sallow green color, and she wants to yell at herself for being so careless, so out of control when there literally was an easily trigger-able person sitting right next to her - she should have thought of Bruce, should have reined in her emotions better - she should have known it would stress him out, didn't he almost lose it in the car, when she'd simply mentioned the Red Room?  _She should have known better_.

She doesn't consider it any less a miracle when moments later, Bruce slowly lowers his head to the table and lets out a sigh.

It's then she realizes that everyone had somehow gotten to their feet - Steve was even in a defensive position already. They were all sporting similar looks of relief, and Tony, a little pale, collapses back into his chair with an "I love you, Bruce."

Steve lets out a relieved burst of laughter. "God, after that? I love you too, Bruce."

Clint's shaking his head, muttering under his breath. "Crazy. I'm with a lot of crazy people."

Natasha feels slightly horrified, but she bends down to Bruce. Slowly, not to startle him, she covers one of his hands under the table and peaks. "You alright, Doc?"

Bruce grips on to her hand like it's a lifeline. "Okay now," he barely murmurs, "Don't do that again."

"I promise you, I won't," Natasha says fervently, then she straightens up to report back. "He's okay. Says don't do it again."

"Amen," Tony says faintly. Steve and Clint look like they might agree.

"We're officially ending this meeting," Steve directs hastily, "reconvene tomorrow. Everyone needs rest. And peace, and quiet. God, just get back to your rooms."

"Hear hear," Clint says too enthusiastically.

"Wait," Natasha stops before they can all agree. "Not yet. I need us to do something first." She glances at Bruce, who's unsteadily rising to his feet. "Well, maybe after Bruce heads off to bed."

* * *

Steve is glaring at her. Natasha assumes some sort of pride in being one of the few women who have been glared at by Captain America.

"This is not happening," he says through clenched teeth.

"I'm with Cap," Tony says uneasily, "It's not a good idea."

"Tasha," Clint tries the good cop role, "he's perfectly fine on here. We can keep a better eye on him."

Natasha folds her arms. "You want recovery? This is how you get recovery," she says obstinately.

Clint closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Natasha," he says slowly, "We're not moving Barnes to another floor, alone with you."

Maybe Captain America is stubborn, and maybe Tony and Clint are agreeing with him, but this was a simple thing, a simple solution. She was Black Widow.

This is familiar, she thinks vaguely as she slides her shoulders back just a fraction, this was her expertise. Persuading, lies and manipulation. She was literally made for this. But then again, this wasn't a very hard thing to do, not when she was already slated for the win here.

"He trusts me," Natasha states blandly. "He speaks to me. My professional opinion is that I can work better if he's alone," Natasha's tone is cutting, a reminder of who she was both to them and herself. She can see them shrinking back. "We have five days. Make the most of it."

Clint is still glaring at her as Tony's little robots prep her level, which is about two floors above their current communal floor. Natasha wants to walk around and admire the place - it's almost an apartment like Steve said, with two bedrooms and a kitchen that doubled as a lounge. But given the situation - and the fact that she'd pulled out her Black Widow iron mask to get her way, she didn't want to walk about touching everything no matter how much she wanted to. Tony and Steve have reluctantly gone away to prep James, to transfer him to the second bedroom on her floor, and she kind of thinks Tony's avoiding her, but she files that away - not important now. Bruce is safely tucked away in his lab, working on one thing or other, whatever that gets him to calm down.

Instead, she focuses on the securing. Another familiar thing, almost an instinct. Locate the exits, note the structures, check the locks and furniture. Stark Tower was as safe as any, but these are things that she needs to do.

"It's gonna be fine," Natasha rolls her eyes, when she can't take Clint's scowling anymore. "He'll be just as comfortable, and you're all two floors away."

"He's not the person I'm worried about," Clint bites back.

She stares at him. "I won't let anything happen."

"Tasha, he's  _The Winter Soldier_." 

Natasha knows this very well, which was the only reason why she fought so hard to separate him from the others. There's no doubt in Natasha's mind that he could murder them in their sleep, and she knows she's playing the highest risk here, separating themselves, but she needs to protect them. She's been thinking about it ever since she left James' room earlier today, but the almost-event with Bruce was what solidified it.  _I've got people to protect_.

She hates this, this urge to make sure someone other than herself or Clint is alright, but she's here right now and she can't take back anything that's been said and done. Above all, Natasha knows James, she knows his play and she didn't like it one. Single. Bit. Whatever his plans were, however complicated her feelings might be right now, she needed to make sure that if James somehow snapped, the others wouldn't be in his immediate firing line. To give them time to react and regroup, maybe even contain him. At any rate, he wouldn't be taking her down too fast - she had learned from him, after all. 

"I know that, Clint." Is all she says, and Clint stalks away in a huff. 

Natasha watches him leave. Clint ticked off at her, Tony avoiding her, Bruce liable to bursting at the mention of her history and she doesn't know how Steve's feeling about her but he isn't very fond of her idea. All in all, Thor was probably the only one has an untarnished (as it can get) view of her. Natasha sighs and leans against the wall, waiting for Tony and Steve to bring James up. She hopes they get here no trouble, but James is probably knocked out on his medicines, so it shouldn't be a problem. 

Maybe this would eventually end well Natasha thinks, and then holds back a laugh. Wishful thinking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 preview: 
> 
> "I'm not going to kill you," Natasha says amused, as Dummy's leaving whirs get fainter.
> 
> "I think this would be a less awkward conversation if you did," Tony says.


	4. backwards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! First, a very important note: I'd mistakenly inserted the wrong chapter preview in my last end notes, and I've fixed that note now but it's nothing very important so you can ignore it if you want. Secondly, I have a great new beta in Kim_Gwenhwyfar, shoutout to Kim for bringing us this chapter without it's previous spelling errors and grammar mistakes. All said, happy reading! <3

" _Hope it didn't stress you out too much_ ," Bruce is saying, hands in his pockets, " _At any rate you'll be safe here. Natasha's on the floor._ "

James doesn't react to this, doesn't even look at Bruce - he keeps his eyes on the currently-opaque windows.

" _If there's anything urgent, we'll know it,_ " Bruce continues, seemingly used to this routine, " _JARVIS is on standby as always._ " Bruce straightens up and nods at him, even though James is still not responding. " _I'll see you later_."

Natasha watches Bruce leave the room on the projected playback of James' room on the wall of her new room, and returns her gaze to James as the door slides shut behind Bruce. James stays still, casts a glance at the closed door, then flicks his eyes to the ceiling again. Natasha notes everything he does with a finger tracing her lips. She's starting to get an idea of how to work around James, or so she hopes. She's been watching him since earlier this morning, when he was still fast asleep from the effects of the medication he took last night. James had woken up just a little after dawn and had promptly thrown a fit of sorts at his unfamiliar surroundings for precisely ten seconds.

A part of her had been immediately thrust into guilt and wretchedness for James' current condition. Sure, he wasn't being held hostage in terrible conditions - James was in high comfort in everything from the clothes he wore to the bed he slept on, if Natasha wanted to compare it to her experiences of being held hostage - but she hated seeing him tied down like this - helpless, even if he could rip her apart in seconds should she allow it. Especially in his condition. Play or no play, there was something very real about the way he had struggled, looking truly terrified - it had reminded her of a caged animal, and she had felt bile rising up her throat at the thought of the things he must have been through to get to this state of mind. Natasha had to remind herself, quite a few times, that she was impartial, she was neutral, she was Switzerland, if you'll have it - but Natasha has had so many horrors in her life, and he - James had been a sunlight she could keep, secret and rare, just for herself, in the midst of the horrors.

The circumstances are different, Natasha keeps telling herself over and over. Long ago, she had been a little girl breaking bones and choke holding other little girls to move up in the Academy - to  _survive_  - and James had been... her teacher, her mentor. It was cold, like he said, it had always been cold, and Natasha remembers shedding her clothes, one by one in the freezing snow until her body got used to it, because the assassin who can't adapt is the assassin who dies, they had drilled that mantra into her repeatedly. James had honed her skills beyond everything she had already been taught - sniping, fighting, the knives - he had been somebody feared and respected... and then later on... somebody to touch and kiss.

Natasha brings herself back to the present with a sharp shake of her head. She watches James stare out of the window for another second, then removes the playback with a word to JARVIS, and then stands up and stretches, her fingers reaching high above her head. A good sleep had been what she had needed to clear her head, to return her sense of self-preservation and the vestiges of her Black Widow self, and Natasha had awoken with a crystal cut list in her head. A lot of loose ends were getting tied up today. 

* * *

 

Natasha has run hundreds of covert ops before, and most of them had not taken place in a comfortable, high-tech towers in New York. She has had to deal with bad weather, worse living conditions, unwilling marks who hired hitmen to protect themselves, and it had never been (much of) a problem for her. So it wasn't a particularly hard job, to find and pin down Tony - in fact, it was probably one of the easier things she has had to do since she came to his tower. Tony wasn't a spy or a soldier - it would be too easy for her. It’s just that Natasha feels more than a little reluctant to stalk and corner the man who had given her an _entire_  floor, fully furnished, to herself.

So Natasha waits for him, stalking the coffee room above his workshop that Tony makes frequent visits to, and then her patience starts to run low because somehow Tony found out that she was there (she has her money on JARVIS, who's suspiciously silent throughout her entire operations) and he had stopped coming out of his workshop entirely. It wouldn't be that hard for Natasha to just stride down there and disable the privacy codes and enter his workshop, but Tony had shown her a great courtesy and kindness (even if Natasha and Tony both would never admit it to anyone) in bringing her back to New York. So Natasha gives him that, allows him to avoid her for another couple of hours while she prowls around, checking on everyone else.

Clint is gone, presumably to train, and Bruce has gone back to his lab after checking on James. Natasha keeps an eye on him because he's next on her list, right after Tony, and Bruce has a knack for disappearing into his work with an intense concentration, and none of them liked to disturb him when he was at it - she wants to catch him before he disappears into his science world. Steve had come in, sweaty and slightly red, after his morning run, and the last Natasha checked on him, he was on his way to James' room with a book in his hand.

It's clear that Steve's trying to make the most of whatever he can get from his old best friend, and part of Natasha wants to smack James upside the head, maybe with a table or a chair, to get him to stop playing his games and just come clean, but she reigns in her thoughts. James too, was on her list for today, and what was it they said about save the best for last?

Natasha is good at waiting, as all spies are - so much of spywork was simply waiting, although the key part was waiting and  _not_  being discovered. Still, she only has five days left, four if she doesn't count today, and she need ~~s~~ answers, so fuck courtesy, Natasha thinks, and she slinks down to Tony's workshop quietly. She doesn't employ JARVIS' help, but she doesn't doubt that Tony would have set up alerts for whenever Natasha's within twenty feet of him, so she makes like she's heading to the stairs that lead to his workshop, and then promptly pulls herself up into the airvent to catch Tony when he will inevitably run.

"What the fu- " Tony stumbles back a step after Natasha smoothly lets herself down in front of him.

She stares him down with her should-be-patented blank look. "Going somewhere?"

"What's  _wrong_  with you?" Tony swears under his breath, "Dropping down on innocent people like that -"

"We need to talk," Natasha interrupts his would-be-diatribe.

"Oh, see - all the times I've heard that sentence, it doesn't end well for me. Usually costs me a diamond or two, sometimes a slap, and I really don't want to go down that alley with you - no offense," Tony shrugs conversationally, "Not that I wouldn't be honored to be slapped by you - but you did stab a needle in my neck that one time, and I'm still cautious with you from that - speaking of, we should probably maintain a healthy fifty feet between us, only for the condition of my heart, nothing else -"

As Tony prattles on, Natasha takes a second to marvel at his ability to simply  _talk_  without stopping, jumping from topic to topic easily and with a good amount of charm. When she had been Natalie Rushman, she had found it to be an endless source of amusement - she especially loved the look on his board investors' faces when he went on one of his tirades in one of Stark Industries' usually boring meetings. But still, the day was getting shorter, and Natasha needed to get on with her list, so she steps forward slowly, deliberately predatory.

" - Uh, fifty feet, Natasha," Tony reminds her half-heartedly, even as she advances to put a hand on his shoulder. Natasha simply steers him around back to his workshop, ignoring his "Bruce? Can I at least get Bruce here?"

She waits until they're both safely encased in his workshop and watches as Tony steps back into the comfort zone of his workbench and then stares at her reluctantly. His Dummy whirs forward in a concerned manner and Tony pats him once before pushing him off.

"I'm not going to kill you," Natasha says amused, as Dummy's leaving whirs get fainter.

"I think this would be a less awkward conversation if you did," Tony says.

She walks forward and finds a chair amidst the mess, keeping some distance from Tony to make him comfortable. "We can't skip around this anymore, Tony." Natasha warns heavily. "It's just a matter of time before I have to have this talk with everyone else. And I'd like to be prepared when that time comes."

"Um, I don't know what you're talking about?" Tony tries, and Natasha levels her Look on him again. He gives her an eyeroll. "Fine. Prepared for what?"

Natasha shrugs her shoulders delicately. "I guess... I just want to know what everyone might be thinking."

Tony's eyes narrow at her. "You think we're gonna turn against you for that?"

 _Not a spy or a soldier_ , Natasha thinks,  _but so damn intelligent._

"No," she says, suddenly feeling wrong-footed even if she practically cornered him into having this talk. "That's not what I - no." They look at each other for a few moments, and then Natasha says abruptly, "What do you know about me?"

Tony goes from defensive to reluctant again and Natasha hastens to speak. "I've read your entire file, Tony," she says with a brusque nod intended to show him she wasn't going to touch on it. "And I know you must have hacked into every SHIELD file imaginable the day I brought you on. There are no secrets between us."

He stares at her for a second, and then nods with the same curtness she had. "Not every file," Tony gets up, leading her to the back of his workshop with a wave, "Just the, uh, kind of important ones."

It's more secluded here, and a little darker too, Natasha assumes its for further privacy in case anyone comes knocking at his door.

Tony says, "JARVIS, give me the restricted access files," and a holographic keypad appears in front of him. Natasha averts her eyes as Tony does a series of tapping in the air, and then there's a muted beep, and Tony puts his palm downwards like he's grabbing a rope and pushes it upwards, into the blank, dark air in front of them both. Suddenly, Natasha's entire life is unfolding in front of her.

Tony is backing away and Natasha doesn't pay him much mind because there's suddenly a lump in her throat. Everything - _everything_. There are words, and there are numbers, and, god - there are pictures. There are videos, too, but they are all of her after she defected to SHIELD. There's her, fighting side-by-side with Clint, and there's another one of her, flipping over some burly man's shoulders. The pictures, however, are of her in the Academy - those were so ~~,~~ incredibly rare, Tony might get assassinated just for having them, and she doesn't even know how anyone could have gotten these, but she hasn't seen these in  _years._ The pictures all look incredibly faded and spotted the way old pictures do, even in their digital form.

She steps closer to one picture. Natalia must be seven years old in this, she muses, examining it closely. Her hair isn't it’s brilliant scarlet, it's muted in the dimness of the snow and lack of sunlight. She's short, so small, but Natasha can easily identify that on-guard form her little self was taking, with shoulders firmly pulled back and down, hands relaxed by her small, straight hips but forearms tensed and ready for attack - and that blank little look on that small little face. She's focused, eyes on something in front of her, and there are other girls standing in row alongside her focusing on the same thing, but Natalia draws all the attention.

There's another. Natasha steps to her left, watching closely, at what must be a matured Natalia. She cannot pinpoint the exact age. The girl is taller, looks a hundred times stronger, and her ever scarlet hair is longer, going past her shoulders. She must be on a mission, Natasha surmises from the form-fitting black dress she has on. In this picture, Natalia, is walking down a darkened street with her hand wrapped cozily in the crook of a shorter man's arm. Her mark. It was unmistakable, the way Natalia held him close to her body, how her legs were ahead of his, guiding their passage without him realizing it. Natalia is smiling at her mark. It's her honeyed smile, the one even Natasha employs every now and then if her target was close. She can tell, Natasha thinks vaguely, by the way Natalia is biting her lower lip a little.

"Was this before I - They made me - This?" Natasha realizes belatedly that her voice is cracking.

Tony, a merciful man, doesn't show that he's heard it. His voice is soft as he replies her. "I don't know, Natasha."

Natasha takes a closer look at the picture. She herself cannot tell if Natalia, working on her mark, has been subjected to that watered down serum that had created both Captain America and the Winter Soldier yet.

"I don't think so," she hears herself say to Tony in a businesslike tone, "Looks too young. Not as fit." Natasha scrutinizes the photo again. "I don't think so."

There's silence, and Natasha moves on to the rest of the holographic mine. There's an incredibly short video - maybe about 1.8 seconds long, of a ballet recital. Natasha squints, focusing, and sure enough, there's that flash of red hair in the midst of white bodies.

"How long have you known?" She asks softly. There's an infograph of her. No names, no ages, nothing about her that might be found on a birth certificate. She scans it thoroughly. Natasha doesn't remember her parents' names, and if she was being honest with herself, it had been too long now for her to actually care. Still, she thinks that it might be nice to have a birth date.

"On the Helicarrier." Tony tells her. "I didn't hack into SHIELD after you brought me on. Promise." Natasha turns, gives him a smile that he doesn't return. "On the Helicarrier," Tony repeats, "when I was going through the Phase Two weaponry. I went through everything."

Natasha hmm's, scanning down another, longer list of her skillset. It's an accurate one, although one or two points might be a little understated - her sniping abilities, for example. It doesn't bother her, and she moves on to the rest. Another one also lists the extra powers (Natasha is loath to use that word) that the serum had given her, and Natasha pays this little mind. There's nothing on there that she didn't know already. There's another infograph of her kill count. She barely glances at it, doesn't care enough to look at the numbers, and skips through to another holograph, this one containing (very little) details of her time at the Red Room.

There's a list of training methods ( _Torture methods,_  Natasha's mind fills in for her) and Natasha looks through this with a little more attention. She expects herself to recoil as the memories come back, of the ice cold water being jetted at her through huge hoses, and the feeling of having her ribs broken ~~in~~ by another competitor - but she doesn't. Somehow, Natasha's able to view them like she's an outsider watching a movie, and while it doesn't hurt her, it does make her a little melancholic for Natalia Romanova.

"Who knows?" Tony says suddenly.

"Me. Clint. Fury. Whoever did it to me, though they're dead now." Natasha answers him absently as she combs through the data with meticulous care. "And now you."

"You found them?"

"Yes," Natasha replies. She's almost at the edge of the holographic minefield now. "After I went rogue. I went back to Russia. He was very old." Natasha recalls the sight of his wrinkled hands, the way he had struggled to remember her, and the recoil of the silenced gun in her palm.

"So you killed him?"

Natasha turns her head slowly to Tony, expecting him to look appalled or horrified or, maybe even disgusted or scared. But Natasha was unapologetic back then, and she is unapologetic now. "No one could know," she states blankly, "I would have been hunted. I saw the effect of Captain America, the fight for the serum. Besides," she adds, "he deserved it."

It’s a careless justification, and she expects him to object, maybe - But Tony doesn't, nor does he look like any variation of her expectations. His gaze is intense, jaw is set, there's steel in his expression and Natasha is inexplicably reminded of the man who escaped the warzone he was kidnapped to, and then went back afterwards to obliterate it and his enemies. He doesn't say anything, but an understanding passes between them. Natasha straightens up, her critical examination done.

"Come on, Tony," she says, walking away from the holograph. "We're done here."

He jerks his head a little. "Yeah."

They leave that darkened corner, Tony telling JARVIS to lock everything back up, and Natasha feels like they're walking out of an entirely different universe, different timezones and all. The bright lights and the messy tables, with its numerous half-dry coffee cups scattered randomly around tables, the faint scent of motor oil in the air, and Dummy's greeting whir from his corner makes Natasha feel a little bit more adjusted, a bit more... normal.

"So," Tony says faux-brightly, despite that look he's been wearing ever since he opened her file for her, "That was a fun little field-trip."

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, her mask of impassiveness back on her face. "Sure was." She hesitates only a little. "Thanks."

There's a brief pause. "Natasha," Tony says then, just a little defeated, and that look on his face is more pronounced now - Natasha is unwilling to put a name to that look, but she knows that it's the exact look Clint had given her when he had found out, too. It had led to Clint giving her a long, tight hug, and she really isn't sure if she wanted Tony to hug her, even if a hug did sound nice right about now.

"Look at it this way," she suggests, walking away, "You can be the one to tell the others that Clint's the only normal person in our group." Natasha risks a look over her shoulder and Tony's looking even worse now, and she doesn't want to leave him like this - she feels like Tony's section in her ledger is overflowing - so she turns back around.

"Tony," Natasha makes her voice as cool and deadly as it can be.

Tony looks apprehensive. "What?"

"Now that you know," She says ominously, dragging out the suspense. "I might have to actually kill you."

Tony blinks, and then - "Get out! Just get out, I don't know what the hell I ever did to - don't just stand there, leave, JARVIS, put a call to Pepper - no, make it a video call, I need a hug and some loving words right now - Are you still here?" He demands of Natasha, glowering, hands waving about crazily.

Natasha pivots, smirking on her way out, and she can still hear Tony yelling away as she went up the stairs. She takes a moment to recollect herself, a deep breath, and then finds that her now-answered question was a burden in her mind.

There had been nothing about The Winter Soldier in her file.

* * *

 

Bruce is next on her List, and Natasha is glad to see Bruce only half-invested in his work, as he's just sitting at his computer. The wiser not to startle him, Natasha taps lightly on the glass door. Bruce straightens, turns around, and his face relaxes as he waves Natasha in.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Bruce asks her, a light smile on his lips. There was just something about Bruce that put her at ease, despite the incredible irony of his alter-ego scaring the everliving fuck out of her.

"I come bearing gifts," Natasha announces, smiling back at him and holding up a plate, on which she had piled with sandwiches before coming down to his lab.

"Ah, bribery?" Bruce clears some space on his desk for Natasha to set the plate down.

"I wouldn't need to bribe you for anything I wanted, Doc," Natasha says slyly, and also honestly. She's just hungry, and this was time-management. Lunch and her List in one go.

Bruce just smiles at her again while pulling up a chair for her.

"What are you doing?" Natasha looks over his shoulder as they both grab a sandwich each. "Anything important?"

"It's just a side project," Bruce says, swallowing, "Something Tony suggested a while ago."

"Would I understand it?"

Bruce makes a  _meh, not really_  face. "But with time, I'm sure..."

"If I'm interested." Natasha gives him an innocent smile when he mock-scowls at her.

"So," Bruce reaches for another sandwich, "What's up?"

"Bruce, I don't want you to think I'm just here to use you -"

"Barnes," Bruce says immediately.

" - Because I'm  _not_ ," she finishes pointedly. And then, "But yeah. Barnes."

He shrugs, easygoing. "I knew you would come."

Natasha wonders just how much this perceptive man knew versus how much he was letting on, and she makes a mental note to never ever underestimate Bruce.

"It's about his scans," she says, pushing the rest of the sandwiches towards him. "I want to see them, compared. From day one."

"Sure," Bruce sounds a little puzzled. "You think there's a mistake?"

And here's the thing about Bruce - he's just simply so  _curious_  sometimes, see-through and no hidden motives type curious that sometimes, Natasha has trouble  _not_  telling him things, like in the car on their way here, when she'd simply told him about the Red Room when she had planned not to.

"I think," Natasha says slowly, "That we might find something new."

"Okay," Bruce still has that puzzled tone in his voice. "I'll go get the scans." He dusts his hands over the now empty plate and gets up.

And Natasha thinks,  _fuck it_ , she's already going to bare her past to them one way or another.

"He's aware," she tells Bruce, "He remembers. I think he's pretending, because he acts like he doesn't know anything around you or anyone else, but I know he remembers, I  _know_  it. But his panic attacks are very real. I need to figure it out."

Bruce has paused right where he's standing, mulling over her words. "You think he's pretending?"

"I -" What was she going to say? That it was a feeling? "Yes."

"Natasha, the scans don't lie," Bruce says quietly, almost protectively. "He has brain damage."

 _Fuck it_ , again. "It's a gut feeling. I know it."  _I know him_ , she doesn't add, but by the way Bruce's eyes flick to her, she thinks he knows.

"Let me get the scans."

Natasha stays at the table, stretching a little, while Bruce digs around in a big, beige folder. She watches him frown at some, then he eventually pulls out a bunch of files and motions for Natasha to come over.

"These are his x-rays," Bruce hands them to her. "Why don't you check them out while I sort out his MRIs from day one?"

"Thanks." Natasha goes by the windows and holds them up to the light. She doesn't wince, but she does feel a significant amount of awe at his skeleton. Natasha doesn't know where to begin - does she focus on the multiple hairline fractures on various parts of his bones? Does she think about the fine lines that meant they'd been broken and healed over and over again? Or does she leave the rest and stare at the metal that had been blocked out in this scan?

"This was day one," Bruce comes over. He points out one fine crack below James' neck in the scan. "That was Steve and Sam. Of course, it healed over in a day, but I imagine the pain must have been intense."

"It got better after this?" Natasha asks.

Bruce hmm's. "Especially after getting proper nutrition and hydration." Bruce gently flips through the files Natasha is holding, then pulls one out and holds it to the light. "This is his most recent x-ray. He's mostly healed over all his previous injuries, but the fine lines are from previous hits."

"Those won't go away?" Natasha wonders about her own broken bones.

"It's hard to say," Bruce muses. "The serum is one of a kind, so I don't have a frame of reference that I could compare it to. And anyway, Barnes was injected with a slightly different serum. It makes it even more unpredictable."

Natasha stares unseeingly at the x-ray, and then she asks Bruce something she's been wondering for quite some time now. "Is he... immortal?"

"Is Steve immortal?" Bruce asks rhetorically. "Without a frame of reference, it's really hard to say. All I can do is guess."

"I trust your guesses," Natasha puts in with a smile.

He grins back at her. "If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say - not immortal, but dying of old age is a possibility - that is, a faraway possibility. He clearly doesn't age the same way we do, so his lifespan must just be longer than most."

Natasha doesn't know what to do with the relief Bruce's theory brings her. Luckily, Bruce moves on from the x-rays with a gesture and leads her towards another table, where he has neatly laid out James' MRI scans.

Natasha's jaw drops slightly.

"Yep." Bruce is glaring at the scans.

"They... tortured him." It's a realization that hits Natasha like a train, and she feels like she shouldn't feel this shattered, because she already knows - of  _course_  she knows, hadn't she heard the stories? Hell, hadn't she lived in the Academy? Of course James was tortured. Of course. Yet it's the scans that are throwing her loop for loop - she feels a little nauseous, and she feels a little wrench in her heart. They had done everything short of destroying him. 

His scans show significant damage. Bruce points out a few places and tells her things about them, omitting the  _hows_  and focusing more on the effects, but Natasha is only half-listening. She can't think about anything else - James pretending, Clint leaving,  _four days_  - at the moment, all she can think about is how scared and lonely James must have been. He had told her once, he had said something to her when they had collapsed in bed, exhausted after a lengthy mission. The adrenaline that came with the high after successfully completing a mission usually drove them to each other, frantic and wanting, but it had been a tough one, and they were both tired. It had been in the very beginnings of their understanding, and sure, James would rip off her clothes with few words, but it was still a little formal. They tiptoed - well, she had tiptoed around him sometimes - it had never escaped her that he was a powerful man, to her, more than just physical. 

And she had said, "You wanna take the couch?" 

James had turned his head to stare at her, and then he had rolled over, on top of her, enfolding her entire body with his. She had felt his metal fingers scrambling underneath her back, pulling her flush against his body, and then he had said, "You're not leaving me alone."

" _Strashno_?" she had teased him halfheartedly, if only to distract herself from the sensations his movements brought her. 

James hadn't answered. Instead, he lowered his head to the crook of her neck, where her neck met her collarbones, and then he had just burrowed his face there in an gesture that left an unexplainable lump in her throat. She hadn't understood then, but much later, when the rumors started coming out, she did.

Natasha blinks back to reality, there's silence in the lab and Bruce is staring at her now. She isn't here to repair her weird, drawn out relationship with James or think about anything that's happened between them - she's here to fix him. 

"Sorry." Natasha is sincere. "I didn't mean to zone out like that." 

Bruce holds her gaze, and then says, "Are you okay?"

Natasha involuntarily jerks her chin. "Yeah, I - I am." 

"It's okay. You know." Bruce tilts his head. "We know there's history between you two. If it's hard..." 

"No," Natasha says firmly, and then she relents unwillingly because  _Bruce_. "Sometimes. It's hard sometimes, but it doesn't matter. I just... don't have a lot of practice dealing with this."

"Don't we all," Bruce says kindly, nodding, and drops it. "So the brain damage is real, you can see that." 

Natasha grasps on to the change of topic gratefully. "I'm not denying that it's real, Bruce. I know it's real, I would never - Is it possible for him to remember at all?" 

Bruce frowns, back in his scientific curious state of mind. "I really can't tell. His damage is extensive."

"But he remembers me," Natasha presses. "He remembers some things from back then. He called me Natalia." She thinks, calculating his responses and his minute facial expressions. "And I'm pretty sure, about 80% sure that he remembers me from the fight on the bridge." 

"What?" Bruce quirks an eyebrow. "How?" 

 _Fuck it._  "He asked me if I worked for Steve," she recalls the memory perfectly in her mind. "And I said no. That I worked  _with_  him. His microexpressions were changing. Nothing particular I can pigeonhole but just slight changes, eyebrows moving and eyes narrowing. He doesn't have a reason to ask me that, Bruce. And -" she thinks about another tidbit of information. 

"And?" Bruce prompts her gently. 

"When he'd zoned out into the past. I think I - he remembered that he was my teacher." Bruce doesn't react to this information. Natasha continues. "And then he said something. I might be just reading too much into it, but he said,  _you're_   _very good._ " She looks at Bruce. "Present, not past tense. I had a hand-on-hand combat with him on the bridge. He knows."

Bruce is frowning again with a faraway look in his eyes. "I checked his scans," he says eventually, "Last night, after dinner. I matched the scans to the minutes on the tapes. During the parts where he'd.. ah, zoned out, his brain didn't show significant, voluntary action."

Natasha feels a surge of energy through her. "So he wasn't pretending then. He _couldn't_."

"Yes," Bruce agrees. "That was very real, and if he had said those things to you, then... he probably does remember."

Natasha holds back an intense  _I knew it_! 

"But it was only when he zoned out," Bruce warns her, "The rest of the time when he's aware, he doesn't remember anything. It can simply mean nothing beyond the fact that he has PTSD."

Natasha is already on her feet, shaking her head. "No, Doc. He  _has_  PTSD, and he does have brain damage - but I know that there's something else going on there - and why would he lie to us if he did remember? Why is he holding back during the time he has control over his mind?" 

Bruce looks like he's not even going to try and dissuade her. Natasha notes that it's similar to the look he gives Tony every now and then when Tony comes up with one of his crackpot ideas. "Maybe he's not lying," Bruce suggests halfheartedly, "maybe it's - it's -" Natasha waits, trying not to give him her Look, as Bruce tries and fails to come up with something. "Alright, you might have something there," he concedes, "Not much, but still something. It's still a maybe, Natasha."

"I've had less to go on with in the past, Bruce," Natasha reminds him. "I have the maybe. Now I want to know why he's hiding things from us." 

Bruce wipes his glasses on the edge of his sleeve absently. "I mean... And I'm  _not_  giving support to your Barnes-is-pretending theory," he proclaims, and Natasha waves him on, smiling. "If it's true, what you think, then I guess the most important question is why did he ask for you when he did?" 

Natasha has theories on this too, but she doesn't share them - at least, not until she's sure of anything. 

"Four days to find out," she says instead, grimly.

Bruce lets out a sigh and places his glasses back on as he walks Natasha to the door. There, he touches her arm briefly. "Good luck," he says, "I'm willing to help you if you need it."

Natasha doesn't hesitate this time. "Thanks, Bruce," she says softly.  _It means a lot that you care about James_ , she doesn't add. She watches him smile at her and then return back to his work, and ~~then~~ takes the stairs to the main room. She wants to sit down and compile every exhausting little detail she has learned so far, but her conversation with Bruce has more or less confirmed her theory, and with that came another idea she has been toying around with. But for that, she needed the third Avenger on her list. Natasha collapses into a sofa, waiting with her phone pressed to her ear. 

" _Jane Foster,_ " the sweet voice answers. 

"Hi Dr. Foster," Natasha greets. "This is Agent Romanov." She hesitates. "Natasha Romanov." 

" _Oh! Hi, Agent - Natasha,_ " Jane stumbles over her words, clearly thrown for a loop. For some strange reason, she wants to laugh at this form of relief that comes with a person who doesn't hide behind words or emotions. " _I - what an... unexpected, is there anything I can do -?_ "

"I apologize for this," Natasha interrupt smoothly, mostly because Jane sounds like she's having a panic attack. "I know it's strange, we've never even met before."

" _I've heard a lot,_ " Jane replies, and Natasha thinks there's a smile in her voice. " _Thor speaks very highly of you. Also thinks you're the closest thing to Lady Sif on Earth,_ " she adds with a laugh.

Natasha can't help a wry chuckle. She had heard about the Warriors Three through the gossip vine in SHIELD. "There are worse things to be known by."

Jane laughs again. " _So I assume you're calling for Thor?_ "

"Yes," Natasha says. "I didn't know how else to reach him."

" _No problem. One minute._ " Jane's voice is next heard a little far off, calling for her boyfriend. " _Thor? Thor! Natasha Romanov is on the phone for you!_ " 

Natasha hears a series of sounds, like someone is knocking objects out of the way, and then suddenly, Thor is in her ear. 

" _Natasha!_ " The Asgardian greets her joyously. " _What a wonderful surprise._ "

"Hey, Thor," she says, smiling, "How are you doing?"

" _Very well,"_  Thor tells her. " _I'm at Jane's home, mostly, while she works, but Darcy is around sometimes, and Jane has adopted a little - beagle, was it?_ " He asks, and Natasha hears Jane's affirmation. " _Yes, and so I'm kept busy. And you? Have you finally returned from your secret trip?"_

"I'm alright, and yes," Natasha says easily. "I'm at Stark Tower now. I heard you were dropping by this week."

" _Aye, I was planning on returning on Saturday. Is there a matter?_ "

"I wouldn't want to pry you away from Jane," Natasha offers. "But there's - I assume you know about The Winter Soldier?"

" _Bucky Barnes, our Steve's best friend_ ," Thor recites, and then, in a gloomier voice, " _Yes, I heard about his return. Tony has kept me in the loop. How is Steve faring?"_

"As well as he can," Natasha answers. "The thing is - we're now on a deadline, Thor, we have to get Bucky back in four days or the Word Security Council wants to get their hands on him."

" _Ridiculous!"_  Thor says angrily, " _The man is injured._ "

"He is. Thor, I have some theories," Natasha says in a rush, because her telling Thor had just reminded her of how urgently she needs to fix this. "And I'm kind of running them in the dark here, but I - I need your help." Natasha leans forward. She isn't used to simply  _asking_  for things, instead of manipulating her way through it, but she has never seen the need to fidget her way around Thor. "I think maybe you and I can help him to recover. You know I wouldn't pull you away from your home but I -"

" _I understand,_ " Thor says in an incredibly soothing tone. " _I too have been thinking about helping, I do not want Steve to despair more than he already does. I will make haste. Expect me in two hours._ " A pause. " _Maybe three_ ," he says, a little gravelly, and Natasha understands he wants to make his goodbyes with Jane. 

"I completely understand, thank you, Thor." Natasha says gratefully. "My regards to Jane."

" _I will pass them on, Natasha_." 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 preview: 
> 
> Natasha’s body is so tensed, so locked in her position that she can barely breathe. He’s standing behind her half-opened door, just looking at her. Natasha knows she’s on edge, but he looks as frozen as she is.
> 
> She stares at him, hard. “What are you doing?”


	5. sequence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! I haven't abandoned this story. :P This chapter is brought to you by my amazing beta Kim. I love any and all of your comments, so don't hesitate to let me know what you think. Happy reading! 
> 
> ...Oh, and uh... Advanced apologies for the ending. ;)

 "Bet it wasn't easy for you, going after Steve and Sam after that. Everything must have been different." Natasha strides away from the closing door and over to the windows. She feels around for the remote that would let her change the opaque setting to transparent, fully aware of James' slightly bewildered glare on her. She gives up on  finding  the remote. "JARVIS, let us see the sun."

The AI obliges, and the windows slowly turn  transparent . James' eyes stay on Natasha, even as the soft sunlight streams over his face. He does not flinch, although Natasha does note that his face relaxes just the tiniest bit as the light hits him.

"Hmm?" She prompts him. Natasha is fully on the offensive in today's conversation. "Must have been quite an adjustment for you." She makes a pause. "Then again, adapting isn't hard for us, is it?"

His glare loses its intensity a little, and he looks more confused now. Natasha almost wants to stop.

"You taught me that." Natasha throws out, walking towards his bedside. Then, to test if he's still with her, she placed a hand on the jug at his bedside. "Water?"

He looks at the jug and shakes his head.

"I think," Natasha says, lowering herself into the chair by his bed , "That it's time for you to talk."

James is looking balefully at her again, and she almost misses it when he sullenly mutters, "About what."

"Everything." Natasha tells him simply. "I've come a long way for you, James, and I don't like  to be led in circles . You know that." She pauses, thinking this over with herself, wondering if she wants to let him have this piece of her. "You know me."

His eyes flick up to hers sharply. "I don't."

"Oh?" Natasha adopts a lofty air to hide how thrown she is by his statement. "Because I recall differently. It was you who would not stop screaming my name for, hmm," she quirks an eyebrow curiously, "was it half an hour, JARVIS?"

" _40 minutes, Ms. Romanov_ ," JARVIS replies dutifully.

"Thank you JARVIS. Forty minutes." She slants her head towards him.

James continues to glare at her for the next couple of minutes, and Natasha starts to rethink her strategy. There are other offensive options she can go through in her little session with him today. She  had  decided,  the moment she woke up, that today is for answers, that she needs something from James that she can go on - because all she has of him is memories, and then some rumors and a shoulder that took a month to heal from his bullet on the bridge.

James is still glaring at her when he says, "I called for Natalia."

Natasha hides how taken aback she is by this and affects an unmoved mask. "I  am  Natalia."

"No." James spits this word at her, and Natasha sees the vestiges of her Soldier in his  microexpressions . "You're  Natasha ." James looks away, glaring at the window, and then back at her. "The doctor, he - they all call you Natasha."

Natasha can't decide if she's incredulous that he  dares  to accuse her like this, or if she's just plain amazed that he's talking to her this to begin with.

"Is that your problem? That I go by a different name?" Natasha straightens up, choosing an offensive stance. "I have many, James. I was Nancy, and then I was Natalie. I'm Natasha now, but I was always Natalia with you. Do you remember,  _comrade_?" She allows her tongue to roll into her  mothertongue by the end.

"Don't lie to me," James snarls - actually  snarls , Natasha notes with a mild fascination, with his eyes flaming and teeth baring. "You're  not  her. Natalia would never - she's not -"

"Not what?" Natasha presses him, leaning forward. She's not frightened by him. "Natalia would never  what ? You keep talking in these half-baked sentences -"

"Shut up." He hisses at her.

"You called  _me_ ," Natasha accuses, her voice rising, putting every single bit of her anger out on display for him to see. "I came because  _you _ called  me  -"

"Shut up," James says, only this time it sounds like a plea - and a little bit like the Bucky that Natasha has seen in the movie reels she had watched upon Steve's resurfacing.

"Why did you call for me?" Natasha asks him squarely. "If I'm not Natalia, why the hell did you want me around so bad?"

James looks like he is either going to strangle her or start crying. They glower at each other for a long time, and Natasha doesn't care. She just does not give a fuck today. She will sit here all day, all fucking week until the Council or Steve come to take him away, but she needs answers from him. She needs  something  to go on, a clue or a hint he's James or Bucky or the Winter Soldier - if he is friend or foe, a villain or her former lover. She needs answers because it's not just her heart at stake here, she has people to look after now, she has Steve in mind, and Clint so close to retiring to a peaceful life, and Tony and Bruce, all so vulnerable, definitely vulnerable if faced with the Winter Soldier - it's not just Natasha against the world anymore.

She has people to look after now.

" _Natasha_." Steve says gently, in her comms.

Natasha almost jumps. She remembers then, that Steve had stubbornly positioned himself outside of the room, insisting they both keep their comms open, with Clint gone and Tony and Bruce in the lab. She can tell that last night's CCTV replay was still fresh on Steve's mind, and had obliged, if only to soothe Steve's worries.

James is staring at her now, the hard line of his mouth softened but eyes still narrowed. She meets his glower for another moment, and wonders if this is a lost cause.

Natasha nods her head abruptly and gets out of the chair, unwilling to have the last word between them. She tells herself it's so the conversation between them will still be open for another round.

"Don't go."

Natasha, almost at the door, freezes. She hears and ignores Steve's pained intake of breath. Slowly, she turns around to James. He's gazing at her with a lost look in his eyes.

"What do I have to stay for, James." If Natasha sounds tired, it's because she's pretending. Or so she tells herself. There's another stretch of silence between them, and Natasha eventually turns to the door again.

"My Natalia," James says suddenly, and it's only the note of pride in his voice that makes her whirl around to face him. She can even see it on his face - that slight cocky raise of his eyebrow, and that tiny smirk pulling at his lips. "My Natalia," he repeats, "would never play games with me."

Natasha's heart jumps to her throat, and a tidal wave of fury sweeps through her entire body. She feels almost lightheaded with the anger that comes with the realization that she had been played. By him. All this time.

What had he gained from that? Natasha races over the entirety of their conversation, minute and hurried, detailing the things she had said to him. He knows - he knows -

Natasha struggles to recollect herself. It's okay. We're okay.

What does he know, Natasha?

He knows she cares. She'd given too much away - the raised voice, her expressions, accusing him and convincing him it was her, it was all things he would have collected just now, no doubt to use it in whatever grand scheme he has planned for her.

It's a realization that strikes her with fear - but only for a microsecond. Like everything else, this, too, Natasha can - and will - use against him. She feels herself rolling back her shoulders.  I will take you down.

"Your Natalia?" Natasha asks, not taking the obvious bait while stalking her way slowly back to his bedside. Natasha can practically feel Steve's uneasiness over her comms. "Was I yours?" She can tell she's taking him off guard.

"You - Natalia was." He keeps his eyes trained on her approaching form, but his confidence wavers just the slightest bit. Natasha wants to laugh. This is child's play for her, like reciting the alphabet or counting numbers. This is literally what she was created to do.

"I was, wasn't I?" Natasha corrects him easily, a small, malicious smile curving her lips. "Oh, I remember." She can see his flesh hand trembling. "I remember very well. Do you?"

James' mouth parts just a little, and with a stutter in Natasha's heartbeat she realizes this is real, now.

"Where do I start? You wouldn't take on any other students after me. You remember the first time we kissed, behind the stage at the ballet?" Natasha wants to close her eyes at the memory, but she keeps her voice silky and quiet. Menacing.

James is shaking his head, eyes scrunched up. His metal arm is clanking noisily against the handcuffs, trying to grip at his hair. "Stop. Stop it."

" _Natasha_ ," Steve sounds surprised and distressed, by James' agitation and her confessions.

"Do you? Because I do." Natasha presses on mercilessly. Offense, offense, offense. She is the Black Widow. "We had many moments together, didn't we? Shall we talk about the first time you took me to your bed?"

James' reaction  is positively violent this time, although the violence is turned inwards, to himself rather than out to her. Natasha notes with a slight bout of panic, how hard he's biting his lip and the veins standing out at his temples. His metal arm clanks louder, and his flesh and bone fist keeps clenching and unclenching.

" Natasha ," and this time Steve is growling in her ear.

" _Eto byl ya , moya lyubov' _ ," Natasha slips into their language easily and willingly. "It is me now."

James' head rolls back, eyes closing, and Natasha darts forward without thinking. She catches him with a hand on the back of his neck and the other cradling his cheek. She's half expecting Steve to burst in any moment with his shield but right now all Natasha can think of is whether she's pushed him too far. She thinks  she  wouldn't be able to forgive herself.

"Hey," Natasha says softly, fearfully. "James. Open your eyes. Come on."

It takes a second, but his eyelids flutter a little, then open. And Natasha can never explain how she knows this, but she feels a hand of ice wrap around her heart and Natasha knows without a doubt that she's currently looking at the Winter Soldier.

"Natalia." He breathes. "You came back."

She feels like she's paralyzed.

His eyes are hooded and there's that far off, thousand yard stare quality in the way he's gazing at her with difficulty - like there is a wall of mist between them, and he's trying his best to focus on her.

"Are you..." he trails off, eyes closing.

Don't let him sleep!  Natasha gives him a little shake. "Comrade," she whispers in accented English, the way they both spoke before.

He blinks back into reality.  What now?  "You're alive?" He mumbles hazily. "I thought they..."

Natasha notes the rapidly changing state of his awareness, the  dilating  of his pupils. She makes a quick decision and silently marks this down in her  mental notebook \- Bucky Barnes, a new section all for himself.

"I'm here, James," Natasha says clearly in her normal accent, and his eyes trace her face, a frown slowly pulling his eyebrows down. He knows the difference, and he must know that they're not where he thinks they are - in Russia - now. She has to move fast, but she wants him to know that there's a border between him and the Winter Soldier - and that the border is crossed today, with her.

Natasha can feel the change in his mood, feel the way he's preparing himself to attack her.

"You're here too," She leans close to him, " _Bucky_."

His eyes open  in confusion - and Natasha flicks on her Widow's Bite and throws a  fist  right to his temple.

The door is violently thrown open . 

"What the hell was that?" Steve growls at her. She has never heard him sound this angry before.

Natasha is looking at James.  _Moya lyubov'_. His eyes are closed, mouth softened. He looks exactly like her James.

"Natasha!" Steve sounds like he's at his wit's end.

"Cognitive recalibration." Natasha says, still with her back turned to Steve. "I didn't hurt him." She strokes his temple where she had hit him with less than half of her strength. The electricity... "I used the Bite to knock him out. That's it."

Natasha turns around at Steve's silence. He's just standing there, looking at her in the strangest way. Slowly, Natasha removes her hands from James, lets his head down gently and folds her hands in her lap, looking up at Steve for  his reaction.

He's still looking at her with that strange look on his face. "You didn't tell me about... about that."

"There's a lot I haven't told you." Natasha knows Steve will note the present tense in her words. She wants to explain, but her whole encounter with James has left her drained.

"Were you and him -?" Steve jerks his hand vaguely.

"Yeah," Natasha allows. "Once. A long time ago."

"But -" Steve's forehead creases as he connects the dots. Natasha waits patiently for him to put everything together -  Steveis intelligent, and with a healthy sense of awareness - she knows he would have zero trouble piecing everything together.

Natasha is about to open her mouth to talk when he abruptly pivots and leaves the room. She tries not to let it sting too much, but the damage is already done. Natasha is equally surprised and hurt at the sight  of  Steve's retreating back.

She sits there, with an unconscious James, finding herself growing weary of silences, until JARVIS (bless him)  interrupts the quiet .

" _Ms. Romanov? Thor Odinson has just landed on the rooftop._ "

* * *

"Jane fares very well, thank you," Thor is saying, "and how are you, Bruce?"

"I'm alright," Bruce smiles up at the god. They're scattered around in the communal room, with Thor in his (apparently) favorite caramel-colored sofa and Bruce taking a seat opposite him. The Mjolnir rests benignly on the coffee table in the middle. Thor looks up as Natasha enters the room. Immediately, he stands up with an outstretched hand.

"Natasha! It has been quite some time."

Natasha takes his hand and gives Thor a smile when he stoops to delicately kiss her cheek. "Great to see you. And in record time, too."

"Jane insisted I made haste," Thor explains, and just before Natasha can steal him away to James' room, Thor's eyes flit behind and above her. "Steve! How good to see you!"

Natasha feels her light mood dissipate, and she tactfully darts around Thor to nod at Bruce as Steve joins them. She notes out of the corner of her eye, Steve clasping Thor's arm and jovially exchanging greetings. Part of her wants to take a gun to Steve's knee or something. Steve would turn his back on her after she's (albeit, vaguely) revealed some of her deepest past secrets, but he would now  act like nothing happened, hug Thor and ask him about his beagle?

And she was supposed to tell them everything about her? Natasha feels sick. She can feel Steve trying to make eye contact with her.

"Everything okay?" Bruce murmurs lowly.

Immediately there's an easy smile to placate Bruce on her lips. "Of course," Natasha says. "Where's Tony?"

"Indeed, I had expected Tony to be first on the roof," Thor joins the conversation. Natasha doesn't let her eyes flit over the space Steve fills in beside Bruce, nor does she respond to his increasingly sad attempts to make eye-contact .

"He said something about having had too much  to deal with  for the day," Bruce says with a puzzled frown, "And something else about not joining us without a couple of scotches."

Natasha keeps her silence.

"Well, he'll show up later," Bruce shrugs. "At any rate we're going to gather for dinner tonight, now that the full set 's  here."

"So what brings you down so early, Thor?" Steve  inquires . "Thought you were coming around later this week."

"Ah, I -" Thor gives Natasha the tiniest confused glance, but apparently puts it together with the speed of (no pun intended) lightning. "I just thought I would, ah, come by and see if I could... help."

There's a weird pause, in which Steve,  having not  missed the little moment between Thor and Natasha, lowers his eyebrows in a frown. Bruce glances between Natasha and Steve in apprehension. Thor, for all his strength, is a transparent man, and Natasha won't fault him for not knowing how to lie.

Natasha considers going with Thor's bluff and keeping it on the down low, until she was sure Thor could help James, anyway, but she  is  feeling particularly vindictive towards Steve right now.

So she says, with the utmost casualness, "I asked him to come  earlier ." Steve's expression grows confused, and she decides to go all the way in. "I think he can help with Bucky."

Steve gets a small, sad look on his face and says, "You didn't think you should share this with us?"

"I was going to." Natasha shrugs unconcerned ly . "You left before I could."

Thor and Bruce  look  between them, both looking extremely uncomfortable. Steve opens his mouth like he's going to say something then closes it, this time looking decidedly conflicted. Normally, Natasha would take a second to appreciate how open Steve is with his emotions, but right now she just wants to throw something at him. She wants to leave. Maybe go back to SHIELD where none of this bullshit can follow her - where the only thing that matters is how fast Natasha Romanov can manipulate and/or strangle someone.

"I have pictures," Thor says suddenly and loudly, "Of Toby."

"Toby," Bruce repeats, nodding, "Let's see it!"

Steve, despite himself, says what Natasha is thinking. "Who's Toby?"

Bruce looks to Thor. "He's my beagle," Thor says with a smile, although his eyes flit nervously between Steve and Natasha. "Jane adopted him, I have the pictures here -" Thor pulls out a fairly-sized phone and starts tapping on it. A moment later, a brown and white beagle is staring innocently at Natasha.

"Cute." Natasha forces out, because really, Thor doesn't deserve her wrath. However -

"He's adorable," Steve says sincerely.

\- Steve certainly does.

"Adopted, you said?" Bruce sounds genuinely interested. As Thor relays the origins of Toby, Natasha takes the chance to slip away with a muttered, "excuse me", heading straight for James' room. She doesn't know how to emotionally cope with this anger and hurt inside of her, brought out by Steve turning his back on her vulnerability, but Natasha's damn sure that if she stays in the same space as Steve for another minute, she might end up giving him a concussion. Besides, Natasha reasons, she wants to see if James is okay, anyway.

Natasha finds James unconscious - sleeping soundly, that is, and she rubs her forehead with a relieved sigh. There's a lot of things she needed to do now - now that Thor is here, enlisting him is her main priority, but Natasha needs to make sure James doesn't have anything critical on her - she hadn't expected to be played like that by him. Sure, she'd basically wrecked his game by the end of it, but it's been a long, long time since anyone had managed to play Natasha.

Maybe that's what made them so compatible, Natasha muses vaguely, staring at him. Maybe that's why they had been so inevitably drawn together. She tries to commit his handsome face to memory - that soft mouth she was so familiar with, closed eye lid s that hold dark, penetrating stares, and his hair - god, if there ever is anything Natasha wants to do, it's to cut  off his hair. Natasha can, objectively, as a professional, view James as he is and nothing else, but the hair just brings back so many memories. Their last days together, Odessa, the bridge - if she wasn't concentrating, Natasha feels like she can think about them forever. And really, maybe if this is over, they are all that Natasha gets to keep of him. Memories.

And if this is over? What then?

Bucky Barnes comes back. Maybe he'll be sorry for the things he and Natasha had done, maybe he would want to... well, move on. And could Natasha begrudge him that? With Steve at his side, and an entire team willing to have his back, could she expect him to look back and want her to be a part of it? Natasha has survived against all odds by herself, but she wouldn't deny that it would have been easier - softer - to have done it with a support system. She couldn't do that to James. All she wants is for him to be -

Natasha stops herself coldly. This is not a fairy tale. If and only if she manages to pull James (and everyone else) through this, safe and intact, then Natasha would consider it a miracle in itself. Natasha isn't going to have expectations, or put any hopes on anyone - here, she was a princess with too much blood on her hands.

"Nat."

Natasha turns a blank face to the door and nods at him. "Steve."

His face twists into something painful.

"Please," he says, "Don't be so - so professional. It's me."

"It's you," Natasha agrees.

Steve  stares  at her, and he looks so remorseful and pained that Natasha wants to tell him - hey, she knows it isn't easy for him. He's going through his own personal hell, too, and Natasha gets it, she gets why something like that is hard for him to digest. Part of her isn't even angry at him for this - this is Steve.  I'm always honest.  Of course he isn't going to mask his shock and give her reassurances.

But there's a part of her, a decidedly infinitely childlike part of her that holds its ground stubbornly.

"Did you know?" Steve  grounds  out suddenly. His tone is hard, but his face shows confusion. "All this time, you... you knew?"

Oh.

So this is what Steve had turned his back to her for. Natasha hadn't thought of it from Steve's perspective.

"I..." She falters. Then Natasha steels herself, because Steve deserves the truth. "In a way. I did."

Steve visibly takes a deep breath.

"After I defected." Natasha  lets out  in a rush. "After I came to America. I... I  caught  up on history. On you, on him... even more than I already had back at the Academy." Natasha struggles to collect her words, to let them out in a pure and truthful manner - she would never hurt Steve like that. "And I - I suspected. No, I knew," Natasha decides then, "Its confusing. But I thought he was dead."

Steve's eyes flick to behind her, but Natasha keeps her gaze on him.

"I told you," Natasha says. "He's a ghost story. Or I thought he was. I assumed someone else had taken up the Winter Soldier's mantel. If I knew it was him -"

She would have tracked him down against all odds. But Natasha leaves that unsaid.

"Steve." Natasha's voice is quiet now and she just  needs  him to know that she hasn't been lying to him. "If I ever kept anything from you, it wasn't deliberate. Or to hurt you. Listen. I have had missions in America. When I was still in the Red Room. But they didn't allow me to diverge off the mission path, you see?" She sounds a little pleading now. "I didn't know then. And after that, I - I thought he was dead."

"Nat... It's okay."  Steve says slowly.  Natasha looks at him and  wants to c lose her eyes  because there's forgiveness in his eyes. "You don't have to...  Listen,  you and I, Natasha, we're complicated ." Steve  looks at her,  hard and determined. " But we're alright."

Steve comes towards her, his steps decidedly determined and unfaltering. He stands in front of her, just close enough that Natasha doesn't have to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. Steve holds her gaze steadily, those blue eyes clear and strong, then he reaches out and simply clasps his hand around hers.

"I'm sorry." Steve says quietly. "I didn't react well."

She scans his entire body language, his entire face, although it's unnecessary. Natasha finds that she has already forgiven Steve.

"That's an understatement," Natasha says finally with a small smile, and Steve's shoulders relax a fraction.

"I  am  sorry." Steve repeats, eyes softening as he recognizes the lack of hostility in Natasha, "I should have been - well, anything but that."

"You and I, Steve..." Natasha echoes and shares a small smile with him. She squeezes his hand gently and  lets  go.

And because they are who they are, this is enough for them.

Steve's gaze returns to James' sleeping form and lingers there with a hint of sadness. Natasha leads him out of the room with a hand on his shoulder.

"I didn't really think about how hard this must be for you," Steve says suddenly as they walk down the hallway.

Natasha doesn't know what to say to that. "It's hard on both of us."

"No, I mean -" Steve stops walking so abruptly that Natasha turns back a few steps to him. "When he asked for you I figured that, you know, and uh, the Red Room and -"

"You can say it," Natasha is slightly amused by his tiptoeing.

"Yeah." Steve grins at her a little. "Well, we all figured. But I just... never really stopped to think about how deep it could go. How it must have affected you." Steve pauses, brow creasing. "How it must be affecting you. Tasha, I -"

Jesus. "Steve, it's not on you."

"You've said that already. And so has Tony. I just -" Steve looks genuinely troubled. Natasha feels a brief bout of guilt for giving him a hard time earlier.

"I'm here on my own. You're not responsible for me. You get that?" Natasha looks him directly in the eyes because apparently, one has  to move mountains to ease Steve's  guilts . She wonders how much more he's keeping hidden from them.

Steve gazes at her, long and hard. "Listen," he says with some degree of intensity. "I don't know what's happened  between  you and Bucky. And I sure as hell don't know about your past. But I want you to know, whatever you choose to tell me or the team, whatever might have happened, Natasha, I have your back."

Natasha can only mutely nod, and maybe Steve gets it, maybe he gets that this doesn't come so freely to Natasha, especially in the odds of the  three  people who know about her, and even then Steve doesn't know anything minus a vague understanding of her and James' relationship.

She will get James through this. If for no one but Steve.

* * *

"You can't ignore me forever."

Silence. Natasha tries another tactic.

"You can't. You like me too much." And then, "Clint, come on ."

Clint finally huffs and meets her eye. "Glad to see he hasn't choked you yet."

He says it without bite and that's why Natasha smiles at him. "I am, too."

Clint rolls his eyes, but the grin he gives her is affectionate and familiar and Natasha thinks maybe Clint was only half-joking just now. Still, she's glad to have him back and not ticked off at her anymore. Clint slips an arm around her shoulders and Natasha lounges on their sofa, waiting for everyone else to settle down into their respective favored couches.

Tony waltzes in, evidently in a better mood after Natasha's session with him. "I see the family's back together. The light has returned to my life, the cockles of my heart are warm, and the balm of my soul is, uh.. balmier."

Thor laughs and exchanges pats on the back with him.

"Please don't ever say cockles again," Clint says distastefully.

"Don't be like that, sweet cheeks." Tony  settles  in an armchair beside Steve who's now chatting with Thor, dodging a pillow Clint throws at him.

"Don't say sweet cheeks, either." Bruce winces, comfortably seated by Thor.

Tony eyes him with a wounded expression. "Et tu, Bruce?"

Natasha hides a smile as Bruce mimes stabbing Tony in the chest. Tony good-naturedly rolls his eyes amidst laughter from everyone.

"Well, now that the knights have settled around the square coffee table," Tony gestures towards their circle, then looks to Natasha. "What's the plan, boss?"

Natasha leans forward, all business now. "I'd like to preface this by reminding everyone that - A) we only have four days left with Barnes, and B) this is largely a team effort."

"An ominous statement, Natasha," Thor says dubiously. By the looks on everyone's faces, they agree with Thor.

"Well, you might not like it very much. So..." Natasha meets her teammates gazes individually before launching into it. "Thor's here early because I asked him to come back. I think," Natasha says carefully, "That Thor can heal Barnes."

Tony looks between Natasha and Thor. "I'm pretty sure smacking him with the hammer isn't going to solve anything."

"I am not a healer, Natasha," Thor says a little regretfully. "I do not practice the magic that allows for such things."

"But there _is _ such magic?" Steve asks hopefully.

Thor gives Steve a mournful look. "There is. But only few rare individuals possess the power. One such person is my mother, Queen Frigga. And the other is Loki."

Clint bristles visibly at this.

"Even then," Thor continues, tactfully ignoring Clint, "I am not sure if they can heal Barnes, not on Earth, anyway. It will take days."

"I'm not asking you to call anyone else to heal him," Natasha interjects quickly. "There's another way we can heal him. One that only you can access."

Tony sits up straight around the same time it dawns on everyone else.

"The Tesseract." Thor intones gravely.   


"The Tesseract." Natasha confirms. They each start to speak and Natasha silences them with a hand. "I know what you're going to say, that it's dangerous and an absolutely terrible idea. Hear me out."

"It _is_  dangerous, and is an absolutely terrible idea," Tony affirms incredulously. "Bringing the very cube that got us into an interstellar war, back  to Earth?"

"Natasha, really," Steve says, shaking his head. He looks defeated. "It's too big of a risk."

"I said hear me out." Natasha cocks her head. Silence falls. Natasha tries not to overanalyze Clint's stiffened silence beside her. "I will, once again, remind you that we only have four days. And so far, nothing has gone right. For all the work I've done here, I've only managed to agitate him." Natasha wills Steve and Bruce to hold their silences. Miraculously, they do. "And all the radiation and therapy you've managed to give him has barely scratched the surface."

Neither Tony nor Bruce deny this. Natasha pushes on.

"Without that, we barely have anything to go on. We either keep pumping him with radiation until either he snaps or his body does, or we keep sending me in until he eventually decides to choke me to death." Natasha knows its a low blow with them, but it's necessary. Or so she tells herself.

"Come on," Tony lets out halfheartedly .

Natasha presses on. "And then what? We let the Council come take him away? We already know Steve's planning to take him and run. So we spend the next god knows how long playing hide and seek with Steve? What then?"

There's silence in the group. She can see that she's gotten through to them. Thor's still looking grave, but Bruce looks like he's swayed. Tony and Steve are having some kind of a staring contest with each other. Clint's eyes are downcast. Natasha is holding her breath, but there's one thing she's very sure of - she's glad they decided to do this after dinner.   


Clint speaks and surprises her. "Natasha's right."

She turns surprised eyes to him. Clint has that face on - one Natasha is intimately familiar with. It's the face he gets when they both have been on missions where the situation gets fucked up almost immediately, and they have to make a tough call. She knows this look intimately because she has seen it aimed at her behind a bow and arrow notched to her throat, in what feels like a different life and a different person.

"The cube can sure as hell get into someone's head." Clint says this while glaring at the coffee table. "It can help Barnes."

Natasha surreptitiously grabs hold of his hand. After a while, Clint gives her palm a gentle squeeze. Neither of them let go.

"The question isn't if the Tesseract can help him, for I know it surely can." Thor says gravely. "It is the question of whether it is right for me to bring it back."

Natasha can see the majesty in Thor's words, she can see the king of a realm as magic and wondrous such as Asgard in the way Thor has one hand leaned on a knee, and the other covering his chin. Yet she finds herself feeling despair at the undoubtedly negative connotations surrounding his words. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Steve's hopeful expression dying slowly. Natasha wants to chide herself. Perhaps she should have cleared this personally with Thor before bringing it out with the rest.

"With all due respect," Bruce interrupts quietly, "The question of if it's right may be in doubt, but I say if it can save a life - maybe two -" He glances at Steve. " - then it's worth it." Tony, with a slightly determined expression, nods in agreement.

Thor looks genuinely surprised at Bruce's words. "My friend. Steve - I do not, for even one second, suggest that your friend's life is not worth saving. Every life matters, I would never deny that."

Steve gives Thor a haphazard nod, although his eyes are still trained on the floor.

"I do not," Thor emphasizes earnestly. "I promise you, friends, I don't. But I have a realm to govern, and my people to think about. I've taken Earth under my protection. This can go horribly wrong - and if it does - there will be much to pay."

"I didn't mean it like that," Bruce starts apologetically, but Thor waves his apology aside good-naturedly.

"None of us do," Tony comes to Bruce's rescue, although he does sound a little sorry.

Natasha decides to step in - having started this conversation, and all. "We're just - we're just trying to help Barnes."

At this, Thor then does something that  catches  Natasha off guard. Thor turns and levels a calm gaze upon her, and she can't identify it but it makes her understand, suddenly, the weight of Thor's power and the gravitas of an ancient legend, a  god  - looking right at her. It feels like she has passed through an eternity.

Suddenly, she can taste something like hope.

There's a brief stretch of anticipatory, tensed silence.

"We will need," Thor starts slowly, gazing at everyone in the room, "tight security. And utmost secrecy."

Steve's head jerks up. Natasha almost can't believe her ears.

"Nothing leaves this room." Tony mutters, then out loud, "JARVIS, delete all recordings from the moment we sat down till after we leave. Fill it in with something generic." Then, when Steve's head whips around to him, Tony shrugs. "Like Natasha said. It's a team effort."

Natasha resists the urge to hug Tony.

" _Done, sir._ " JARVIS replies.

"We'll need to keep the WSC off of our scent," Bruce calculates. "Are they still getting reports on us?"

"I've made sure all they're getting is generic, boring stuff, with a little help from Natasha," Tony nods at her. "Can't hurt to feed them more boring shit."

"I'll get on that tomorrow," Natasha confirms. She wants to high-five her teammates, or hug them or something at the way they're just leaping to help.

"Where are we doing this?"  Clint  leans forward, thinking. "Thor's too high-profile to go back and forth to Asgard without being noticed. We'll need a distraction."

"We'll have to see if the media's got ten  wind of Thor being in town yet," Natasha muses. "If the y  haven’t , he can make a clean break for Asgard."

"I'll do a sweep around my contacts tomorrow, see if any of them have wind of anything," Clint decides. Natasha privately thinks it's a great idea, and she will do the same, too.

A thought strikes her. "Thor, how long will you take to get the Cube and get back here?"

Thor thinks about it. "I will leave tomorrow, so - Two days, give or take."

"That gives us two days on the other end with Barnes." Bruce concludes. "Seems like a nicely allocated time slot."

Natasha and Clint exchange looks at Bruce's words. A perfectly allocated time slot always turns out wrong, in their experience. When one is in their line of work, Murphy's Law really  is  law to them. But neither of them say anything.

"It'll work," Natasha says decisively, although it's more to Clint than the others. Clint has a somber look on his face, but he nods at her words. Natasha looks up and around at her teammates. "If we can pull this off, it'll work." She's cut off by what sounds like someone choking. It's Steve, who has been watching the proceedings with wide, disbelieving eyes.

" I -" Steve starts, then stops. He looks like he's being strangled by an invisible force. "I just - I. You don't know how much this - You -"

Tony saves them all by rolling his eyes at Steve. "You're welcome."

* * *

They disband shortly after, agreeing to meet and finalize things over breakfast the next morning. Natasha slips to her room as quickly as possible, wanting to be alone to gather her thoughts by herself.

She hadn't expected Tony to rally by her side so quickly, and for that matter - Clint, too, but she's so, so glad they did. And maybe Natasha was going to jinx it - but fuck it, because she thinks they can pull this off quietly and successfully.

Maybe they were all going to escape this unscathed. Finally it's all coming together.

Everything is quiet, and Natasha feels herself drifting off to sleep.

* * *

Until its about 2 a.m. when Natasha's senses send off the loudest alarm raging through her body, and she's on her feet with a gun, previously secured underneath her bedside table, before she even knows what's going on. Her hands are gripping the gun tightly and she has it pointed steadily on…

James.

Because god forbid Natasha gets  one  night  of decent sleep.

" _M_ _s Romanov?_ "  JARVIS's  voice manages to sound extremely nervous. " _ Should I sound the alarm?_"

Natasha's body is so tensed, so locked in  position that she can barely breathe. She stares at him, and he stares back at her. He's standing behind her half-opened door, just looking at her, evidently just having opened the door. Natasha  knows she's  on edge, but thing is - he looks as frozen as she is.

She stares at him, hard. "What are you doing?"

Her question seems to rouse him. He takes a step forward, into her room, and Natasha deliberately flicks the safety off her gun. The sound freezes James in his tracks again.

" What are you doing ?" Natasha barks at him, sharper and louder.

" _Ms Romanov_ _?_ " JARVIS sounds positively agitated.

"Hold on, JARVIS." Natasha's voice is mechanical, calm and controlled. "I need an explanation, James. Either that, or you turn around and start walking and we'll get you back to your room."

If this is over without anyone getting hurt, Natasha swears she will get on Tony's ass to improve his handcuffs, Steve's  heart wrenching  expressions be damned. She  knows  she should have seen this coming. Stark Industries are very good at making tools, but expecting a handcuff to keep the Winter Soldier at bay? What had she been thinking? What had all of them had been thinking?

James' eyes move slowly from her face to the gun. Every single nerve in Natasha that has been trained to capture, torture and kill is screaming at her to pull the trigger, or at the very least to let JARVIS get the others. Yet something in her gut, something very basic and old in her is telling her that James is not a malicious force right now.

Natasha watches his indecisiveness with growing frustration. She cocked the gun, holding her posture. "And if you take one more step, I  will  pull the trigger."

All the training in her life has not prepared Natasha for the hurt look James gives her after this. Something in her chest twinges at the sight of him, barefoot and hair  loose  around his chin. He looks so much like her James, before. Natasha half-expects him to sweep his hair into a ponytail then come at her, smirking, to kiss her shoulder, like he had done countless times before.

Natasha fights to keep control in her mind, and damn it all to hell but his posture isn't defensive or offensive at all. She eyes him, trying to find a way to get through to him.

She changes the tone of her question. "What are you doing here?"

At that, he very slowly raises his metal hand, and points at her bed, then at the floor beside it. Natasha puts two and two together immediately, but the disbelief in her almost sweeps her off her feet.

"Use your words, James," Natasha growls at him.

He drops his hand but doesn't say anything. And then –

"I want to sleep here."

If she didn't shoot him before, Natasha is going to. Right now.

Natasha doesn't answer him, neither does she lower her gun, but she takes the silence to assess him - or, rather, who he  is  now.  Is  he the Soldier? She doesn't think so. She thinks if it was the Soldier, they would be engaged in combat right now. Which left three people. Bucky, her James, or whoever the fuck it was that was playing her and at being the Soldier and James. And after yesterday's events, Natasha would take zero chances with him.

Natasha softens her tone. "James? Is that you?"

He blinks at her like he's considering the question himself.

Slowly, James says, "You were right."

Natasha does love being right, but now she thinks there's a time and place for that. "What?" She barks at him again.

"About before. We..." James looks her up and down. "You were mine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 preview: 
> 
> "You don't have the right." He snaps.
> 
> "And you do? After Odessa -"
> 
> "I thought you were dead." 
> 
> This silences her. They stare at each other.
> 
> "You left. Not me. Remember that." James' voice hardens and Natasha suddenly feels her body tensing. "And I'm running out of time, Natasha." 
> 
> He charges forward, leaping over her bed. Natasha pulls the trigger.


	6. impasse

Natasha's heart feels like it's going to explode, and her hands are clutched around the gun so tightly it's starting to hurt her, she can't decide if she wants JARVIS to summon the others, and James is looking at her like he's waiting for verification. Despite all of this, there's only one, clear question that currently is burning at the forefront of her mind: does he know?

Does James know that she doesn't buy his act? Yesterday she had played right into his hands. But after recollecting herself Natasha had come to the safe and comforting conclusion that, by all intents and purposes to James, sheis just like everyone else in the Tower - she doesn't suspect him to be anything beyond a brainwashed, amnesiac assassin. She doesn't think that anything she had said to him was a giveaway that Natasha was on to his little play here. Yet his appearance at her door throws everything out of balance.  _Does he know?_

"Why don't we talk about this tomorrow?" Natasha says carefully.

James' expression changes into an empty smirk. "You and Steve spend all damn day trying to get me to talk, and now you want me to go back to sleep?"

 _Steve_. He had said Steve.

"We generally prefer to talk in daylight," Natasha replies. "Not in the early hours of the morning with a gun pointed at you."

"I'm not the one holding the gun, Natalia." James responds.

Natasha takes a step sideways, more to ease her body out of the now-painful crouch than anything else. She keeps her gun trainedon him. "Have you decided that I am Natalia now?" She asks instead, watching him just stand there like they're friends talking over coffee. "I seem to recall you insisting pretty intensely that I wasn't her."

He lifts his left shoulder in a lazy shrug. The motion ~~s~~ sends a quiet whir into the silence. "Maybe I remembered some things after that."

"How convenient," Natasha says. "You wanna share those things with me?"

"I might," James says easily, eyes flicking upwards. "But I don't want it to listen."

Natasha's jaw almost drops, but she controls her expressioneasily. "JARVIS?"

"I know it records everything," he says, still calm as all hell. "I know it can get the others in here in seconds. If you want me to talk, turn that thing off. I've seen you do it."

"You're under the impression that I'd bend over backwards to do anything you want," Natasha says witheringly. It works - James' jaw shifts angrily. "You not talking benefits me in the least."

"I don't think so," James says smoothly, having recovered quickly and visibly - Natasha realizes he isn't taking any pains to hide his reactions from her. "I think you're starving for the tiniest thing I could tell you right now."

Maybe this is a fluke, Natasha thinks faintly, maybe this is a dream and any moment now she's going to wake up in cold sweat.

"For a person who's supposed to be recovering from extreme brainwashing, you sure are speaking with clarity." Natasha doesn't mince her words - he doesn't, she doesn't see why she should, then.

James grins, seeing right through her distraction. It’s an empty smile. "And this is the only time I will do that. Either you turn that thing off, and we talk now - or I jump ship tomorrow." He tilts his head, his hair covering his right eye a little. "Got you there, don’t I? You know what I'm capable of."

Natasha's outward expression is a perfect mask of vacancy, but she's boiling inside. She can't let him do that to Steve. Even if she shows the recordings to him - Steve will know she has hidden so much from him. She should have come clean sooner.

"We don't have all day, Natasha." James says coolly. He doesn't seem to notice his switching in between names, Natasha realizes as she watches his hostile expression. James seems to be in aone-track state of mind right now. "And tell it to not raise the alarm, too."

Stiffly, Natasha nods to the ceiling. "JARVIS."

" _Ms. Romanov, I must insist -_ "

"Do not alert anyone else. Mute audio and seal the footage to my express permission." Natasha doesn't seal her first command in hopes that JARVIS will use it as a loophole to get Tony if something goes wrong. She arches an eyebrow at James and lowers her gun. Natasha has enough confidence in her abilities to know that she can definitely take him on for a while. "Well?"

"Firstly,  _moya lyubov,_  we must agree not to lie to each other."

Natasha's throat constricts so hard at the term of endearment, that she thinks, for a second, that she will yell at him. He is deliberately playing your mind, Natasha reminds herself, this is a game.  _So I will play it._

"Promises mean very little to people like us," Natasha says lightly.

"People like us," James agrees, "but you and I... we operate on a different wavelength. Do you remember?"

He is still standing at his spot by the door, and Natasha is still firmly rooted behind her bed. Neither make a single movement to each other, but Natasha feels like they're veering into a dangerous territory.

" _I_  remember everything." Natasha reminds him with a brittle smile. "You tell me."

He is silent for a while.

"You were a special case," James says abruptly. "I wasn't to get involved in the Red Room program. Wasn't my mission." The last word is uttered mechanically. Natasha would feel something if she isn't already so on edge. "I was requested to train you. You were..." James trails off, staring at her thoughtfully.

 _A natural born killer,_ Natasha's mind fills in. She had been told that as she grew up. It had been a source of motivation - a mantra she had repeated over and over in her head when she was put against taller, bigger children, while she was still a child herself. That small girl, that Natalia - she had taken it as a point of pride. Suddenly, Natasha doesn't want him to finish his sentence. She already knows what he means.

"Who requested you?" Natasha cuts through his thought.

He blinks, then his face darkens, lips tightening. He doesn't answer.

Natasha wonders if it’sworth pulling this thread. James obviously doesn't want her going into this topic. But Natasha wants to see his reaction, check his loyalty. The answer is entirely useless to her, she already knows. There's only one person at the top of the chain of command where the Winter Soldier was concerned.

She says idly, almost uncaringly, "Was it Karpov?"

James' body jerks so instinctively, so harshly that Natasha thinks he would have slapped her if she had been standing closer to him.

" _Don't_ ," James snaps harshly. "Don't you fucking dare."

"I know." Natasha lowers her gun again - she had reflexively raised it at his movement earlier. "I know."

Of course she knows. She knows every one of James' minute reactions to the man who had transformed him into the Soldier through every single time she had asked him about it, back when they were together. The first time she had tentatively raised the question between them one night, he had instinctively choked her so hard, it hadleft a bruise for days. Then he left and she hadn't seen him for weeks. When he came back, he told her to never say that name in front of him again.

Natasha had brought it up a week later. That time, his metal fist landed on the wall beside her, and he disappeared for another two weeks. On and on it went - until one night, he dropped onto his knees in front of her and let her hug him. He didn't say a word, but that curve in her collarbone where his face was pressed into was damp, and Natasha never brought it up with him again.

James is staring at her like he's reliving the exact thing she is, blinking rapidly and breathing heavily. Slowly, his metal fist uncurls. He visibly takes a couple of deep breaths.

"You were a young woman when they sent you to me." James continues then, tone light and conversational. "Just taken the serum, too. I taught you everything I knew. You learned quickly, rose through ranks just as fast. They discontinued the codename because it had become yours."

Natasha's head involuntarily jerks. "You're telling me things I already know," she tells him irritably.  _The Black Widow_. That, too, had been a point of pride for her.

James seems amused that she is irritated. "What else can I tell you, other than things you already know?"

Natasha grounds her teeth, but affects a nonchalant tone as she says, "Well then. If this is all you were going to say, I -"

"I was in love with you," James interrupts her. "That was one of the things they couldn't wipe from my brain."

Natasha opens her mouth. Closes it.

"I thought you wanted to hear something new." James' expression is innocent.

It’s a diversionary tactic, a manipulation strategy, a distraction, a trick to get her to lower her guard in front of him. All of those things are true, Natasha knows. All of what he had just said is also true.

"And yes," James adds as an afterthought, "I do remember the first time we slept together."

Natasha straightens her spine. Her mind, previously felt bogged down by some unknown weight, was starting to work quickly. She has to think quick, retaliate before he can get any more hits in on her.  _This is a game._

But what's in it for him?

"Tell me, James," Natasha observes his reaction to his name - nothing. "Are you risking your life right now just to tell me a bunch of things that happened years ago?"

His face darkens again. "I'm risking  _nothing._  No one here can touch me."

She's losing him again. Natasha can almost see it clearly, the minute shifts in his expressions and tone of voice that James fluctuates ever so often between him and the Soldier. She has to be careful. She can't let the Soldier take over.

"Have you met Dr. Banner?" Natasha allows a wry smile to part her lips, a distraction. It works.

"Perhaps," James agrees, unconcerned. "But Steve would be the first to defend me."

The smile slides right off Natasha's mouth.  _Jesus_. Natasha feels anger rise up inside her. He's manipulating all of them.

"Fuck you," Natasha spits without meaning to. She can feel her blood boiling. Steve would  _die_  for this man.

"And you would defend Steve to the death too, I think," he adds thoughtfully. Natasha's hand curls tightly around her gun. James' eyes flick up to hers almost slyly. "Is this love, Natalia?"

She blinks at his sudden change in topic, mind reeling with anger and confusion. Then she understands.

Tonight is his quest for information. And Natasha has given him everything he wants so far - she has, unknowingly and indirectly, given him verification on every thought (memory) James has brought up to her attention. And whatever crescendo this entire fuckery is building up to - it's going to happen soon, and it's going to be bad. She has to act smart, cut him off, distract him well enough to ensure a peaceful end. Or, well, as can be.

Natasha laughs in his face. "And what do you know about love?"

James actually takes a step back. There's silence between them. He is looking at her like he's never seen her before.

"Tell me about Odessa," he says suddenly - fearfully, Natasha notes with caution. It’s like Natasha has triggered something that knocked the hostile, cool James out of the way - now the vestiges of the man she had seen earlier today are on the surface. Him flicking in between his... personas, isn't a good thing. Natasha's guard goes up a notch.

She sees no need to pretend with him now. "Why? I'm sure you know all about it."

"Tell me," James repeats. His metal fist curls slightly, plainly in her view. "I want to hear it from you."

Natasha bites back a snarl at what looks like a maddeningly casual request, but she knows to contain a hint of a threat.

"Well, I was on a mission. And so were you," Natasha says this as clinically as possible. "I had to cover my engineer. You shot him through my body."

"Is that all that happened?" This comes out as a demand. There's a slight confusion in his voice that Natasha likes. You want verification? She'll verify fuck all for him.

"What else happened?" Natasha asks him back, eyes wide and innocent.

This time James actually does snarl at her, eyes flashing. "I'm asking  _you_  Natalia."

His chest is rising rapidly underneath his plain grey SI-issues shirt. If he goes off the rails - Natasha can't let that happen, not without her ammunition, and certainly with not just one gun between them.

"You shot me." Natasha repeats to appease him. "I tried to get the engineer away. But I had to escape when you came over to put a bullet in his head." There's a brief, tense pause. He's breathing less harshly now, but he's still got that wild look in his eyes. Then she says, "Or at least, that's what I put on the SHIELD report."

"Something else happened," James says lowly, although it sounds like he already knows what it is. He sounds a little desperate now. "Tell me."

Natasha takes a moment to answer, swallowing. She has kept this story close to herself for a very long time, unwilling to open and dissect it.

"I didn't escape," she says, just the tiniest bit shaky. "I went after you. Just before you aimed your gun at him." She can almost recall the alien taste in her mouth as she looked at him that day, her mind screaming  _it can't be it can't be_   _him_. "We fought. And then you turned your gun on me. You were going to kill me."

"Finish it!" James barks at her tersely. If Natasha is anyone else, she would have jumped. Being who she is, she simply raises her chin slightly.

"But..." She swallows. "You just knocked me out."

That moment had haunted Natasha for number of months afterwards. She had been so sure, so certain that the small gun, aimed squarely at the base of her throat while he pinned down her body with his own, would take her out for good. She had stared into the black goggles as she struggled under his iron grip, feeling like her head was going to explode, partly because the fucking Winter Soldier was going to kill her, and also because her mind was tearing itself into pieces wondering if it really was - surely that wasn't him. That wasn't James - it had been years. He was dead. HYDRA - or the Red Room - had simply found someone else to turninto an assassin - they had done it before, why wouldn't they do it again?

And then he had flipped the gun around and smashed it into her temples. Later, when she briefly driftedinto consciousness, SHIELD agents were swarming her and the dead body of her engineer.

James is breathing harshly again, Natasha notes with a mild note of panic. His gaze has gone unfocused and his chest is rising and falling rapidly. Natasha feels fear leap back into her throat. He would kill her before she can get JARVIS to unlock and get the others, she knows thiswith certainty. She has to bring him back.

"That's the real story," Natasha concludes conversationally, like they aren't two formerly brainwashed Russian assassins having a conversation at 2 in the morning.

James doesn't look like he's heard her say anything. His eyebrows are knotted and, Natasha realizes with growing confusion, she almost doesn't want to believe it, but he looks... scared.

"James," Natasha intones with a little force. His eyes snap up to hers wildly. Natasha forces herself to hold her position.

He nods wildly. "Yes. That's..." James starts to pace, entering her room a little more now. His body is shaking, Natasha can see. Her eyes flick from his curling and uncurling metal hand, to his wildly unfocused eyes and increasing speed of pacing.

The therapy, with Stark and the doctor... I couldn't -" James breaks off, breathing harder and harder. His hands have started to wring themselves. "I think... I think there's a divide. Three different memories." His eyes flick to hers desperately. "I thought some things weren't real. You and I, though, we were..."

"Yes." Natasha says, only because James seems like he physically can't continue.

"So that's real."

"Yes." Natasha feels overwhelmed. Is this really happening? She should have let JARVIS alert the others.

"That's the only constant," James' voice cracks. "Between all three, I -" His hands clutch his head, palming down the side of his face painfully. "You're in my head. I can't -" James stops his pacing and looks at her like she holds the key to all of the answers in his universe.

The thing is - she doesn't. Natasha is reeling from his revelations.

"James," Natasha finally says, and her voice is thick. "Stop. We can help you."

"Help me?" James repeats strangely.

"We won't leave you like this. We have the means and -"

"I'm Bucky then I'm the Asset then I'm James," he recites, eyebrows furrowing. "Who's in the middle?"

"I  _will_  get you out of this." Natasha says strongly, despite the blossoming pain in her chest at his mechanical refute. "I promise -"

" _You_  promise?" James snarls suddenly.

Natasha stops, stunned. She rakes her eyes over his form. His face has gone completely red. A vein on his forehead is throbbing. She watches, completely frozen, as James slowly turns his body to ~~his~~ hers. It feels like Natasha is watching a metamorphosis, by the way his shoulders roll back - Natasha can see, even in this dim light, the way his bicep and pectoral muscles ripple underneath his shirt - and how he positions his legs, his feet pointing towards her. It's with a sort of fascinated horror that Natasha realizes that she's lost him to the Soldier. What triggered it, she doesn't know, and neither does she have the time to analyze it.

The strongest alarm goes through her body and clears her mind with the realization that right now - Natasha is in danger.

"Why not me?" Natasha says lightly, like her fingers aren't trembling around her gun. It isn't fear - It’s adrenaline.

He lowers his chin until his eyelids disappear into his browbone. "You're a traitor.

Natasha swallows. If that isn't traces of a Russian accent...

"I never betrayed anyone." Natasha says instead. She curls and uncurls her toes. It's only a matter of time now.

"They sent me to kill you, you know that?" He says silkily. All the more danger. "After you went rogue. They didn't want you falling in the hands of the Americans."

"I wanted agency over my body. We've discussed this plenty of times." Natasha tries to remind him of their time together, trying to get him to remember that she's not his enemy.

"There is no personal agency in the Academy," he says in a cold voice. "The children of the Red Room are bound to it in death."

"We never agreed to that, James," Natasha appeals to him. "We never had a choice."

"We were never asked to agree. You should have known better." It’s almost scary, the way he's standing there motionlessly, perfect in his stillness.

Natasha triesanother tactic. "And you didn't kill me anyway. You want to tell me why?"

This halts him - he blinks, mouth softening, but his expression hardens quickly. "I tried. I -" His eyes close briefly. "I couldn't finish it. I had to be reconditioned." His eyebrows furrow, mouth shaking a little. "I was in there for weeks for that."

Appalled, Natasha stares at him. She hadn't known that. She knew of course, that they had sent someone after her, maybe even the Soldier, and had went over and beyond to up her security measures. But Natasha had never imagined him not being able to finish the mission - and she had never imagined him being punished for it. For her.

Natasha swallows. "I asked you to come with me." His eyes flick up to hers sharply. "I begged."

Does he remember? That night in Italy, on their last mission together, when Natasha was planning to escape. She had held both of his hands in hers under a tree and begged him to come with her. They could leave, she had told him with burning eyes, they could make a new life.

"I never wanted to leave you behind. I never dreamed -" Natasha swallows. "After I defected - I went back to look for you. I wanted to bring you in, but so much time had passed -"

"And if you had found me?" He demands coldly, angry now. "You'd leave.  _Moya milaya predatelem._ "

"I could have helped you," Natasha states, just as angrily, incensed by his careless words. She knows It’s dangerous to anger him, especially when he isn't James right now, but she can't help it. "I came  _back._ I would have brought you with me. Just like how I begged you to come in the first place, so spare me your fucking judgment."

"You don't have the fucking  _right._ " He snaps. He flexes his metal fist. "You knewI couldn't leave. But you  _left_."

"And you do?" Natasha snaps right back, although his accusation sets a weight in her chest. "After Odessa -" She breaks off, glaring at him. "You knew it was me. There's no way you would have spared me otherwise - you knew, and still you did nothing to find me."

"I thought you were dead." He snarls at her, lips pulled over his teeth.

Natasha falls silent. They stare at each other.

"I thought you were somethingI - they killed. I thought I killed you." James' voice becomes louder and harsher. His fist clenches and unclenches. Suddenly, he turns a cold glare onto her. "And what if I had come back? Would you have left your precious safe life for me?" 

Natasha recoils like he has just slapped her. "I would have left  _everything_  for you." 

"Empty words," James laughs - a scary, maniacal sound. "You would have left  _shit._ I know how you are. Black Widow, Natalia Romanova, survivor, flame of the children." He paces, spitting out the words like they are bullets. 

 _Bring him back bring him back bring him_ back _._

Natasha steels her voice. "James. Listen to me. It doesn't matter what you think would have happened - the reality is that you're here now. It doesn't matter who left, we -"

"It only doesn't matter when it's you who left, does it Natalia?" His voice is a growl. Natasha feels despair curling around her heart. She's lost him. "All of this - it is all on  _you._ ”

_Think fast!_

"You're a liar." Natasha is shaking, or at least she lets him think she is. "You're a heartless, lying, lonely murderer."

It's a last ditch attempt to appeal to whatever's left of James in him. 

He doesn't even blink. "We both are." 

Natasha grips her gun, steel resolve in her heart. This is going to hell now.

"You left. Not me. Remember that." James' voice hardens, eyes narrowing to slits and Natasha feels her body tensing, preparing for attack. "And I'm running out of time, Natasha."

He charges forward, leaping over her bed. Natasha pulls the trigger.

His metal fist easily pushes the barrel upwards and the bullet hits the ceiling with a bang. Natasha wastes no time in leaping off her bedside table to gain distance - distance that he covers easily with a few strides. She grabs whatever comes to hand - a vase, a lamp, and hurls it at him. He fends the objects almost mechanically.

"James, please," she says as they circle each other. Natasha only needs to buy time until the others get there. "This isn't you. I can help you. Please -"

He leaps at her without mercy. Natasha sidesteps him and grabs his flying fist, maneuvering herself into him quickly to thrust the heel of her hand upwards into his face. Her palm finds its mark with a sickening crunch, and Natasha ignores the blood on her hand as he reflexively slaps her in a move that sends her to the floor.

His metal fist rains down on her face as he straddles her body. On the third punch Natasha catches it in her hand, and the following seconds are filled with excruciating pain as she gasps at him, "You're the Soldier right now, and it's  _not_  you -"

He pulls his fist away - Natasha holds on, using his movement as leverage to rise up and roll them both over the floor. She has her hands around his throat and is choking him out before his hands close around her waist - He gasps, choking for breath under her hands, then somehow Natasha is flying backwards into the wall. Her head smacks soundly into the wall but she doesn't have time to recover because he's already coming for her.

She gets to her feet quickly, ripping out a wire in the wall, and immediately leaps around his shoulders, securing the wire around his neck in a moment that brings her back to the bridge. He grabs her, pulls her in front of him and immediately puts her in a headlock. Natasha doesn't struggle - she slinks downwards as hard as she can, using her lower centre of gravity to throw him over her back - but he's much bigger and heavier than she is, so she bites into his flesh hand then breaks away -

Only he's caught her wrist in his metal fist and Natasha swings around, using his hand as leverage to land a kick squarely in his temple. He lets go, reeling, but comes back immediately. This time his fist curls in her hair, and Natasha barely keeps from groaning out loud as she struggles to push away his metal hand closing around her neck.

And then -

There is an almighty crash, and the windows in her room explode.

"There is no need for violence." Thor intones loudly, standing up straight from where he landed. The Mjolnir is in his hand and he's only wearing his sleeping pants, evidently having rushed here without waiting.

Behind him, Iron Man lands on her floor with a loud  _thud_. "Let go of her, Barnes," Tony says in his robot-amplified voice, raising his hand. It powers up.

"No -" Natasha chokes out. But the grip on her throat tightens, and slowly, ever so softly, he lowers his mouth to her ear.

"I need to be taken out, Natalia," he whispers.

Then his fingers close around her jaw.

"No!" Thor dives forward, grabbing Natasha's hand the exact same time Tony fires at him.

"Don't!" Natasha snarls, completely out of character. She pulls out of Thor's surprised, lax grasp and throws her arms in front of James, shielding him with her body.

Her action shocks Tony so much that, in the split second it takes for his laser to hit James, he wildly moves his hand at the last second - the laser hits her bed instead. With a growl, James sweeps Natasha aside in a move that sends her crashing into the wall, and goes for Iron Man.

His metal fist closes around Iron Man's oncoming fist around the same time Steve locks his arms around James' waist. The look on his face is oneof determined sadness.

Natasha can see, through blurry eyes, James spreading his metal fingers around Iron Man's fist, heavily resisting Steve's pull and damaging the iron suit. He ducks swiftly as Tony swings around at him with his other hand. Steve is quick enough to duck, too, but James uses his centre of gravity to flip Steve over his body and on top of Tony, who's powering up his laser again. And then Thor is crouching in front of her, blocking her view.

"Is anything broken?" Thor says urgently, so out of character. He hesitates with his hands over her body, evidently not wanting to hurt her. "We must go now. You need Banner."

"I -" Natasha takes a minute to blink and clear her head. She had crashed headfirst into the wall. She only needs a minute to recover. One minute. "I'm not going, I - NO!"

She sees Steve fling his shield right at James' head around the same time he sees it too. In a move so fast that Natasha almost misses it, James ducks and with unbelievable speed, lunges around Iron Man, pinning his arms behind his shoulders, just in time for the shield to crack into Iron Man's torso.

Tony lets out a pained grunt, doubling over. Steve is stricken for a second - a second that's all James needs, because suddenly his metal hand is wrapping around Steve's throat.

Thor stands up. The Mjolnir flies to his open, waiting fist and James immediately turns Steve around, shielding himself. Steve is gasping, reaching for James and failing - Thor lets out an growl and rushes to him and James immediately throws Steve aside with enough force to send him crashing into the destroyed bed, and then -

They all freeze, because there's about 3 bladed arrows sprouting from James' shoulder.

"No." Natasha staggers over as James pulls it out, looking at it strangely. Blood blossoms from his shoulder generously, staining his ripped shirt. Clint is in the doorway, a deadly look on his face. His hand reaches smoothly for another arrow. "No, Clint!"

"Clint -" Steve says through a cough, standing up. "You were supposed to supervise Bruce."

"Natasha, get out of the way," Clint says quietly, ignoring Steve, his eyes flitting around the room. Iron Man unsteady on his feet, Thor's face black with anger, Steve looking haggard. And Natasha - she knows she must look like roadkill now.

"He's not himself, Clint." Natasha's voice is still a little raspy from the choking she got from James. "You know how it went with me, it's the same -"

James has grabbed her again with his injured arm, but Natasha's recovered a little now. She swings around him, pinning his arm behind his shoulder in a move that dislocates his right arm but he sends his metal fist around her throat again. This happens at the exact moment that Thor, Steve and Iron Man converge on them both. Thor's fist about a foot away from James' face when an arrow hits him squarely in the neck.

Natasha's heart stops.

"No -!"

This time, it isn't her. The look on Steve's face is heartbreaking.

"No, I -" James collapses, right on top of Natasha. Steve scrambles to the floor as Tony and Thor step back, horrified. "Bucky!" Steve whips around to Clint, who's watching them with a glare.

It’s a telling look. Natasha knows her partner. Her fingers find the arrow embedded into James' neck. It's not an arrow.

"It's not - He's not dead. Steve." She rasps throatily, pulling it out. The tip is a needle. Clint had chosen to shoot him with a sedative. Steve whips back to her. "Steve. Look." Natasha presses her finger to his pulse, where ~~,~~ there's a slow, but steady beat. She moves her hand out of the way when Steve's hand immediately shoots out, seeking his pulse. Hecloses his eyes and covers his face with his hands upon feeling it beat underneath his fingers. His body very visibly relaxes, tension draining out of him.

Thor takes a step back and lets out a momentous sigh, setting the hammer down with a noticeable  _thunk_. Tony flips up his faceplate and sags against the wall.

"If we're all fucking done here," Clint says slowly, but with an undercurrent of cold fury Natasha knows she's going to have to answer to, "I'd like to lock him up before he tries to murder anyone else." He turns on his heel and leaves.

* * *

" _Almost perfect." The Soldier steps forward and the light spills over his face. "Do it again."_

_Natalia Romanova is 16, and she represses the cold feeling in her chest at his proximity and nods once. She turns back to her opponent. "Get up."_

_The girl lies there. Her body is shaking._

_"Get up," Natalia repeats, for the love of God get up get up right now._

_She moves, pushing herself up with one arm. She is too slow. The Soldier steps forward and nudges her leg with his boot._

_"If you stay this slow getting out of this room now," he says, "You will find you have trouble walking." He motions with a lazy flick of his wrist and another girl steps into the ring. The girl on the floor crawls out of the ring and scrambles as fast as she can to the door._

_"Natalia."_

_She snaps to attention. Her new opponent has a blank face on, but Natalia knows she is scared. She has seen many girls over the years. They are all scared. She steps forward._

_The fight is over in minutes and the girl is another figure on the floor. This time, the Soldier doesn't bother with her._

_"You got a cleaner break on her arm the second time. Why?" He questions, a teacher._

_"I put more force into my elbows. And less weight on my hips."_

_"Correct." The Soldier steps forward, taking her left arm in his grip. One cold. One warm. She isn't to resist. "You don't have the build to use your entire body force." He stretches her arm out. "I could do something like this." He brings his fist at breakneck speed onto her forearm but stops at the last second. Natalia doesn't even flinch. "And this will break the bone. You won't. Instead," He rolls her arm around and slams his elbow into it, twisting it into an odd angle. "This will work for you better."_

_The pain blossoms and stings. It’s_ _for not having done it right the first time, she knows. Natasha lets her arm fall back to her side limply. "Yes, Soldier."_

_He steps back with a nod. "Report to Karpov. Tomorrow, 6 a.m. We meet at the range."_

_"Yes, Soldier." Natalia watches him leave._

xxx

_"You are late," he says coldly, pushing himself off the crate he has rested one foot on._

_"Had trouble getting Zielkov here." Natalia explains briefly, striding towards him on black high heels as the Soldier leans forward, squinting into the rifle scope, where she has just led their mark to._

_"Good." He sounds satisfied. "What trouble?"_

_Natalia is growing used to these questions. He never used to ask any or care at all. But after a couple of months working together, he talks._

_"He wanted to go straight to a room." Natalia remembers Zielkov's hand sliding up a thigh and represses a cold fury. She had wanted to break his hand, but then again, he is going to die tonight, anyway._

_The Soldier turns his head. His eyes sweep slowly up her body in a move that heats up her skin, despite the cold of the ballet theater. It feels like he can see right through her skin-tight, velvet navy dress._

_His dark eyes find and hold her gaze steadily. "I'm glad I get to kill him."_

_She doesn't answer; instead, she steps closer to the rifle, bending to check on the mark. She feels his even, hot breath on the curve of her neck, and when he puts his finger on the trigger, he holds the handle with his arm around her waist. He feels so warm for someone who looks so cold, she thinks._

_Later, when the job is done and they try to hail a taxi amidst the police cars and ambulances, just a couple of innocent diners standing at the side, the Soldier wraps his hand around her arm._

_"Are you afraid of me?"_

_She wants to tell him the truth, and so she does. It's a surprisingly sweet freedom. "It lessens each time."_

_"Good." He takes a couple of steps closer and kisses her._

xxx

_"What would it be like?" She asks over her shoulder. "Living... normally."_

_He's laid over her body, in an efficient position where he can occasionally press his mouth to her back. "Less murder, that's for sure."_

_She quirks a smile that her hair hides. "I want it. Someday." She waits for the sigh she knows he will heave, but it doesn't come. Surprised, she looks over again. "This is the part where you tell me I'm stupid, and_ it’s _a dangerous thought."_

_A long moment passes before he says, into her skin, "I want it too."_

_It sends a spike of ice to her heart, a forbidden fruit that was now no longer an impossibility. They don't speak ofit again._

xxx

_"It would be nice," he says one morning, "to just wake up and stay in bed."_

_She stops toweling her hair and flicks a sharp gaze around their temporary hotel room. Habit. "I do feel a little sick of gunfire."_

_"No more fake passports," he stretches his arms high above his head._

_She watches him. "No more blood."_

_He continues to stretch. "Just you and me."_

_Her heart skips a beat. "Both of us?"_

_He turns his head to her. "Maybe someday."_

xxx

_"Come with me." If she lets go of his hands, he will disappear. Or that's what it feels like. "We can both disappear."_

_"It's not that easy, Natalia," He says bleakly, eyes boring into hers. "They will find me."_

_"We can hide." She doesn't ever let her emotions show in any way, not even to him, but her desperation bleeds into her tone now. "We're the best they have. Who will they send after us?"_

_He doesn't answer._

_"Please," she says, heart and eyes burning, and this time she lets him see her fear and the desperation on her face. "Please come with me."_

_"I can't." He pulls away, shaking his head. "I can't."_

_"You can," she insists, stepping closer. "You can. We can do it."_

_"What if I hurt you?" He asks her, eyes scared, "What if they somehow turn me against you and -"_

_"We won't let that happen." She reasons. "We'll keep moving, we won't stay in a place for long -"_

_"How long, Natalia?" He asks again, and he sounds tired now. "How long will we run for?"_

_"For as long as it takes." She is determined. Even if they kill her in the process - and she'd like to see if she_ can _die - she has to leave. There is too much horror, blood, and little girls in this life. "I want this, James. And I know you do, too."_

_He is silent. His eyes betray his desire to leave._

_"And more importantly," She says with just the slightest tremor in her voice, "I want this with_ you. _Do you?"_

_"Of course I -" He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "I - I need time."_

_She takes his hand and presses her lips to his knuckles. "You have all night, tonight. Meet me at the St. Mark's Basilica at 4 when you're done." She pauses, swallowing. "This is our only chance, James. We can have this."_

_He nods once, steps past her to leave, and then stops in his tracks. He turns his body towards her and bends his head low. His lips brush her brow. "Keep safe, moya lyubov."_

_She watches him leave with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It doesn't matter._

_It matters immensely, because it’s_ _4.06 a.m. and he is not here._

_She paces restlessly, well-hidden by the columns of the cathedrals. She has to leave. Now._

_But she won't leave without him._

_Her throwaway cellphone buzzes. Her contact, who will transport her out of Russia, is growing impatient._

_I won't leave without him._

_4.19 a.m._

_If we don't leave now, we won't make it, comes an angry text from her contact._

_Five more minutes, she thinks, just five more minutes._

_4.23_

_She fires back, kills one man. An icy hand wraps around her heart when she realizes he is from the Academy. They know._

_Where_ are _you?_

_More gunfire. She takes out a couple more men. And then they come in a group, black coats billowing in the breeze._

_She leaves with a bullet in her forearm and a bitter taste in her mouth._

* * *

Her left eye is purple, but the swelling will go away soon enough. Her face aches like hell, and she's pretty sure her jaw has been fractured and is in the process of healing. There are bruises all over her body from being smashed into the wall, and Natasha's right hand will only be functional in about an hour. 

Still, she muses, staring at her reflection unseeingly, it could have been worse. James, for some reason, hadn't been aiming to kill. That much is clear. She knows he could have done significantly worse damage if he wanted to. 

_I need to be taken out, Natalia._

Her fist curls involuntarily. What a mess. What a mess he is. 

She had let Thor and Steve carry James between them while Tony prepared the most secure room in the Tower - which is the room beneath the labs. None of them had mentioned the fact that the room is supposed to be a containment cell for the Hulk. Steve had watched, stone-faced, as Thor and Tony locked James' wrists to the bed - more secure and stronger ones, Tony had muttered to no one in particular. Those were the only words any of them had spoken the entire time. Their trip was filled with a scared sort of silence, the kind where no one wants to speak because they were all afraid of what might come out. 

And then Thor, being the only calm one of all of them, turned to her and suggested that she might go and see Bruce about her injuries. Tony opened his mouth seemingly without meaning to, presumably to point out that Natasha doesn't actually need a doctor, and then wisely shut up one word later. Mostly to avoid Steve and Thor's questioning stare, Natasha had limped out of the room under the pretext of getting treated, and then headed straight to her quarters. 

She doesn't think she can face any of them now. But still, Tony's almost-slip has its merit. She can't keep hiding from them forever. 

" _Ms Romanov,_ " JARVIS says then gently.

She puts down the towel. "Yes, JARVIS?" 

" _Captain Rogers is holding a meeting in the lounge. He wants everyone to be there, no exceptions._ "

Maybe this has all come to end at the right point. Still, she doesn't want to pile on more complication if she can help it.

"Tell me, JARVIS," she rasps a little. James' metal fist had done a number on her throat. "Is he angry?"

JARVIS hesitates only a little. " _That's not the word I would use, Ms. Romanov."_

Natasha nods grimly at her reflection. Might as well. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my love to Kim for being an amazing beta!
> 
> Chapter 7 preview: 
> 
> Frustrated, Natasha stands up. "We're this close. We are so fucking close! Don't ruin this now."
> 
> He actually slams his hands on the table and stands up, too. "Look what he did to you!" 
> 
> "I personally would love for you two to stop acting like this only affects the both of you."
> 
> "Tony..."
> 
> "He is right. We are a team."
> 
> Clint starts laughing into the ugly silence that follows.


	7. conundrum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How cool was the Civil War trailer? In this chapter there are certain points of conflict between Tony and Cap and I just wanted to clarify that this fic does not allude to the future movies. It barely takes anything from the Winter Soldier, and I completely ignore Age of Ultron anyway. Just a reminder. And thanks as always to Kim for her wonderful beta skills. Happy reading!

Natasha is the last person to walk into the lounge.

She drags her feet, stalling partly because of her hurting, bruised body, and also because the current mood in the room is a little hard, even for her, to read. It's at times like this that she truly understands Nick's skepticism of them as a team, as The Avengers, and she can somewhat sympathize with Capitol Hill's (however misguided) worries. They are, each and every one them, truly strong personalities, volatile and unpredictable and intimidating.

It's a very good thing then, Natasha muses vaguely as she makes her way into the pit, that she's one of those strong, volatile personalities.

Steve is standing alone, arms folded, gazing out of the window. Clint is leaning on the wall away from him, while Tony stands beside him, both of them talking quietly and rapidly with mirroring expressions of silent anger. Bruce and Thor are on one couch, deep in discussion, both with similar serious expressions.

Bruce looks up and produces a first-aid kit out of nowhere as she approaches. Thor has a mildly disapproving look on his face as he helps Natasha to the sofa with a hand, but he does look a little encouraging after Natasha very deliberately (with for the purpose of pleasing Thor) allows Bruce to swab some antiseptic lotion to on her face, particularly her aching and swollen eye.

"Should have come straight to me," Bruce murmurs, dipping the cotton ball into the solution again. Behind him, Natasha notes that Tony and Clint exchange a few more words before Tony nods and stalks off to Steve.

Thor agrees, squinting at her wounded face and bruised arms. "He has inflicted quite a lot of bodily harm on you, although you were sparring with him for all of five minutes."

"You should see the other guy," Natasha says with a faint smile as Clint makes his way to the pit. Years and years of working together have taught Natasha to read the tension lines in Clint's frame, and right now? She knows Clint is pissed. At her or at the situation? She can't tell, but her instincts tell her it's a little bit of both. But Clint hears her quip and shoots her a grin, looking like he did so despite himself.

"Indeed," Thor says, with just the faintest note of pride, nodding as Clint slinks around the coffee table to perch beside Natasha. "Between Bruce and I, it took quite some time to reset his shoulder."

Natasha, despite her injuries earlier, had used her entire body weight to dislocate his shoulder - to put him down, she remembers grimly.

Bruce has a faintly disapproving smile as he gently tips her chin upward to look at her neck. Natasha gets a clear view of Thor, Clint, and Bruce collectively wincing at the state of her throat.

"He's got quite a grip with that metal hand of his, huh?" Bruce mutters darkly, checking her neck sideways. "I'll need to x-ray this, make sure nothing's broken."

Natasha's pretty sure she's fine, or at least will be in the next hour given the serum, but Thor has that grave look on his face again and she decides not to question it yet. Natasha is about to agree with Bruce when Tony, who's still standing with Steve, their backs turned to the four of them, raises his voice.

"I don't _care_ that you're Captain America, you're being a complete idiot right now," Tony says angrily, whirling around and stomping over to the pit. He glares at the four of them as he drops down into a sofa. "He's a fucking idiot."

"Tony," Bruce cautions, shocked.

Natasha somewhat agrees - Tony deals in snarks and sarcasm, and is never this vulgar. "What's going on?"

"What's going on? You can ask our dear Captain yourself. O Captain, my Captain," Tony sings, leaning around the sofa, all in an extremely irritated and sarcastic voice, "Come here and tell our friends about your brilliant plan."

Steve walks over calmly, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. He takes the seat in front of Natasha, completing the circle, looks at her seriously and says, "Are you okay?"

Tony sags in his chair with a muttered "Jesus Christ."

Thor and Bruce look completely lost, even as Bruce focuses on taping a band-aid to the dried corner of Natasha's mouth, but Clint and Tony exchange wary, knowing looks.

Natasha looks from Tony to Steve, who's still pointedly avoiding everyone's gaze. "What's going on, Steve?"

Steve takes a deep breath, closing his eyes briefly. Then he looks at her. "I -"

"He's going to take Barnes and run!" Tony explodes, scooting to the edge of his seat. "That's his brilliant solution. They're going to go play some hide and seek with the rest of the damn world."

Natasha's mouth parts disbelievingly, because Steve just sits there, not denying it.

"Cap, come on." Clint says uneasily, "That's ridiculous."

"I agree." Bruce turns, pausing halfway in the act of opening a bandage. "It's really not a good idea."

"It's what I have to do," Steve says listlessly, staring down at the coffee table. "I can't let him stay here."

"It is an unwise plan," Thor says, leaning forward. "Even without thinking of the danger you could put the both of you in."

"Steve." Natasha says. They all fall quiet. Steve still does not look up. "You can't do this. Do you hear me? You're _not_ doing this."

"I have to get him away from here, Nat," Steve replies just as quietly. "He's... dangerous."

"Don't." Natasha finds her voice rising without meaning to. Bruce has stopped working on her, the four of them staring between her and Steve like it's a tennis match and their words are the ball. "Steve. You can't do this now. We're so close to finishing this."

"Think about it," Tony says. "Think about the _danger_. What if -"

"That's exactly what I'm thinking about," Steve snaps suddenly, eyes flicking up, an icy, angry blue, to finally meet their gazes. None of them flinch back. "Look at what I've done, letting him stay here!"

There's the smallest pause at Steve's outburst - Natasha feels kind of stunned by this turn of events. Tony recovers first.

"I was actually talking about the both of you against Capitol Hill, and, oh, just the _entire_ US Army," Tony says incredulously, "but okay, let's take that route."

" _That_ route?" Steve's voice rises, angry and even more incredulous. "Look at Natasha!" He whips his head around to stare at her. "Look at her, Tony! He could have _killed_ her!"

"With us here? Not a chance," Tony says dismissively, but his eyes flick to her uncomfortably, indicating he's more worried than he's letting on.

"I'm getting tired of repeating this, but _this is not on you,_ " Natasha finds herself saying to Steve. She won't reassure Tony - he should know better. " _I_ made the decision to silence JARVIS. _I_ decided to take him on."

"Natasha, please," Steve says, losing the angry edge in his voice. He sounds sad and very, very tired. "I can't let him hurt any more people."

"You don't have to!" Natasha says, frustrated. "We're going to fix it. We're going to _heal_ him. That thing that happened tonight? That wasn't him. That's not him and you know it."

How can she do this? How can she make him _see_ that they have it, last night was a fluke, that Steve just needs to trust her and get through this?

Steve is shaking his head and it's starting to drive her crazy. Bruce interjects gently, "Steve - maybe we should talk about this after a breather."

"I'm with Doc," Clint puts in seriously. "We need a break before making any crazy decisions."

Thor nods as well, but he looks worried. "The Tesseract is still our main plan. We should follow through."

Steve is still so stubbornly shaking his head and honestly, she's been through one hell of a night - it's the last straw for Natasha.

Frustrated, she wrenches herself to her feet.

"We're this close, Steve," Natasha hisses at him angrily, looming over the coffee table, "We are so _fucking_ close to actually _fixing_ this! Don't ruin this now. Don't ruin this for James!"

Natasha almost can't believe it - but Steve actually slams his hand on the table and stands up to yell at her. "Look what he did to you!"

Steve's complete departure from his usual calm, collected character shocks everyone into silence.

"Look at yourself!" Steve barks. "He could have killed you! He could have killed _everyone_... maybe he's just not who we thought he is now, Nat. I need to protect him."

Steve sounds so defeated by the end that it would have wrenched at Natasha's heart if she isn't already feeling like smacking him. Natasha can't find the words to say, to make Steve _realize_ that they were _So. Goddamned. Close._ To finishing this. That he doesn't have to do this alone. She can't find the right words, but a part of her realizes that Steve might be too blinded by his grief and guilt to listen to her anyway.

Natasha lets the silence stretch, trying to gather the words to rouse the defeated Captain standing in front of her.

"You know," Tony breaks the silence loftily, "I, personally, would love for you two to stop acting like this only affects the both of you."

"Tony..." Bruce chides him.

Suddenly, Natasha realizes that Thor and Bruce aren't making eye-contact with anyone. Clint is glaring at the coffee table like she and Steve hadn't just had a shouting match with each other.

"What? Am I wrong, Bruce?" Tony stands up too, looking around at them. "I thought this was a team effort. Did we not agree on that the other night? Do we not, each one of us, have personal stakes in this?"

Natasha blinks at him. Her head is reeling, and not just from James' punches. This is all going _way_ off course.

"Tony is right." Thor says. He sounds somber. "For better or worse, we agreed to this. All of us. We are a team." His words come off a little uncertain as Thor glances from Steve's folded arms to Bruce avoiding eye-contact, and the glare on Tony's face.

There is a pause - and Clint starts laughing into the ugly silence that follows.

"That's great," Clint says, still chortling, "That's just bloody great." He looks up at them and rolls his eyes. "You can all sit the hell down. This isn't a damn wrestling ring."

Natasha feels the tension practically rolling off him in waves and sits down quietly. Tony follows her example after a second, but Steve stares at Clint, unmoving.

"Something funny, Barton?" Steve says, just a little testily.

Natasha, who knows better than anyone in this room that an angry Clint is not someone the rest are used to, wants to warn Steve - she wants to tell him to just sit down and let this go, but she keeps her mouth shut. Maybe it's time for some tough love - and no one is better at dealing out cold realities than Clint. Her partner is usually the last person to truly let something get to him, but when he does - let's just say that Clint and Maria Hill have had some legendary arguments without a single fist being raised.

"Yeah, actually, Rogers," Clint's laughter peters out into a grin as he scratches his chin, looking supremely unconcerned with Steve's silent anger. "I find this entire situation completely hilarious. Don't you?"

Steve's fists ball up, a move nobody misses yet everyone ignores.

"Here we are," Clint gestures around their circle with his beer can, "Here we are, beat up and bloody, ready to stick our necks out for you, _Cap,_ -" Bruce winces at the biting title. "- ready to risk our careers and our lives for you, Rogers, and here _you_ are - being the most selfish I've ever seen you."

Natasha squeezes her eyes shut. "Clint."

They ignore her. Tony, Bruce, and Thor are watching on with similar frowns.

"Me?" Steve says quietly. "I'm trying to protect you. All of you."

"Are you?" Clint fires back. "Let's think about this. Let's really go through your plan, for a minute. Do you think that going on the run with Barnes is going to help anyone but you?"

"Clint," Natasha says a little more loudly.

He ignores her again. "I get that he's your friend. I understand. But here's the thing - you making decisions based on guilt is not going to bring him back. It's not going to help anyone. Trust me, I've tried." Clint's voice slants into a growl at the end. Tony's face closes off. Phil.

Natasha can't look at them anymore. "Clint, don't."

"What?" Clint's head turn could have been knife throw for all the tension in him. "You keep treating him with kid gloves, Nat, this is what's gonna happen. Tony's right." He turns back to Steve, whose face is slowly draining of color. Natasha notices that his hands are slack now. "We all have personal stakes. The second you take him and run, we're all going to face the law for coming as far as we did till now. Because believe it or not, Cap, we're your friends too." Clint tosses the beer can without looking - it lands perfectly in the trash can. "And for some dumb ass reasons I really don't feel like discussing now, none of us are going to give you up without a fight."

Steve drops into the sofa, his hands rising to his face. Natasha isn't the only one who ignores the fact that Steve's eyes are wet.

"Listen." Tony says after some silence. "Hawkguy is right."

"Oh fuck you, Iron Ass."

"He is, though," Bruce says. "We're willing to deal with the Council together." And then he gives a wry smile. "The way you all dealt with them for, ah," he shifts into an accented, professional voice, "harboring a murderous, chemical monster." Thor snorts and Tony pats Bruce on the back for an "A+ mimicry of WSC." Natasha rolls her eyes at them.

"I mean, I know we're pretty dysfunctional. Right? We've all seen the reports. Some of us wrote them." Tony shrugs at Natasha's _let it go_ look. She doesn't hold it against him, knowing quite well that Tony's only acting up to inject some lightheartedness between them. "But I know for a fact that we are not _this_ dysfunctional. Steve, buddy - are you really that worried about Barnes killing us all? Because I don't know if you've heard, but we're the Avengers."

Thor bristles. "That offends me. What? It does," he says as Bruce rolls his eyes at him.

Steve stares blankly at the coffee table and answers after a long time. His entire posture screams of defeat. "The Tesseract... is not failsafe."

"There it is," Tony says in a gameshow voice, holding out his hands.

"It's not that simple," Steve continues, ignoring him. "If we bring it down and it doesn't work on him - let's not even get started on what's going to happen when the WSC find out we brought it down, unauthorized. And I know Thor isn't telling us how hard it's going to be for him to bring it down here, anyway."

Natasha shifts to look at Thor, who lifts his chin.

"Aye. I am not denying that," Thor says slowly. "It will be hard, convincing the Allfather to send it with me to Earth. Tensions are already high between our realms from my brother's... stint." Thor's face tightens at this, but he carries on, staring hard at Steve. "But as Tony said. This is a team effort. For better or worse - we've come this far."

His words register in Natasha's mind and stays there, resonating in a way that she understands all too well, but is somewhat reluctant to act on. Clint's words hover in her mind as well. _None of us are going to give you up without a fight._

A long time ago, after defecting and proving her worth and loyalty, Natasha had brought the single existing file of her history to Nicholas Fury. And then she had sat in a SHIELD room in the highest floor of the Triskelion and fisted her hands in her lap as Clint and Fury said those words to her. _We take care of our own, Romanov._

"Barnes is playing us."

It takes the rest a second to register that Natasha has said something, and then another second for them to actually process her words. Their faces, previously tight and tensed and then a little light, turn wary.

"I knew on the first day. I... I should have told you." Natasha can't bring herself to look at Clint or Steve, and Tony has an extremely apprehensive look on his face, so she focuses on Thor and Bruce. Safe places. "He's faking it. Some part of it, anyway."

"What are you saying?" Steve asks in a breathless voice. "Bucky is -?"

"He _is_ sick," Natasha presses, because god, is James ever sick and damaged. "But he knows it. He wants something and that's the only reason he's here. Why he called for me." She has theories, again. But now is not the right time. "Bruce's diagnoses weren't wrong. He's suffering from extreme nerve and brain damage. A heavy dose of PTSD and paranoia as well."

"But..." Bruce shakes his head. "Natasha, I put him through the scan tonight. He isn't in control."

"Not right then. He wasn't." Natasha nods grimly. That wasn't James. That had been the Soldier. A deprived, damaged Soldier who hadn't been able to function to the highest capability they had made him to be. "But he was - is aware. He knows, and he's played us so far."

"Why?" Steve demands, but with a desperation that doesn't make it offensive.

"I don't know, Steve," Natasha replies, just a little helplessly. "I really don't know why. But I know for sure that it's what's going on. And that's how I can tell you that the Tesseract is going to work. He's halfway there himself." She can see that it's not really convincing him, so she sighs and prepares herself for another round of intenseness. "JARVIS?"

" _Ms. Romanov._ "

"Can you please play, with audio, all the footage of me in Barnes' room, please?"

Tony shoots her a look.

" _Of course, Ms. Romanov."_

A holograph creates itself in view of all of them. Natasha sees herself walk into James' room, the very first time she had met him after _years_ \- and she averts her eyes. Natasha means to watch her teammates instead, to see the reaction on their faces to the lies she had said to their faces, the truths she's so conveniently let remain hidden. But she finds her gaze finding that coffee table Steve had been so fixated on.

Her face is reflected in the polished glass and Natasha can see the damage James has done. Of course, the serum thriving in her body has already worked its purpose - some bruises, including the one Bruce had been dabbing at earlier, looked like they were two days old instead of mere hours old. But Natasha isn't a supersoldier. Not like Steve, or James. Her body was made of a poorer, watered down serum that the Soviet scientists had agonized over.

So she can see, with clarity, the cast of James' fingers, etched almost beautifully into her throat. Does he know? Deep underneath the damaged psyche of the Soldier and god knows who else - is he aware of the things he has done tonight? Had James watched, maybe alarmed and unwilling and fuck, frightened, as he drove his metal fist and created a black crater in Natasha's eye? Had he been underneath all that rage and pain?

Her hands are trembling. She steadies them easily, calmly.

_I'm Bucky then I'm the Asset then I'm James. Who's in the middle?_

How can she know? Natasha had wanted to shout at him, shout at herself. If she knew would she not have given it to him, freely and willingly?

_You knew I couldn't leave. But you left._

Natasha can't stop her shaking hands this time. Because it's true. While desperately seeking a freedom Natalia Romanova had only ever dreamed of, Natasha Romanov had doomed James Barnes the minute she stepped out of Russia.

She had felt guilt. Oceans of it, weighing down on her chest, much like the weight on her heart right now, the empty, lonely nights she had spent in safehouses around the world. Rolling over at night, sleepless, finding the empty space where James was supposed to be, fighting for her life against Red Room assassins sent to kill her without the man she had wanted to share everything with - guilt, guilt, _guilt._

And when the Soviet Union fell and Natasha Romanov became Natasha Romanoff, SHIELD agent, too many years had passed and the Winter Soldier had indeed become a ghost - if only in her mind.

On the screen, James says, " _I was in love with you._ "

Four pairs of shocked eyes turn on her.

She hears the sounds of the windows in her room shattering all over again, when Clint speaks up.

"Think we can stop here, JARVIS."

Silence descends onto the six of them.

"You and Bucky - you were together?"

 _Bozhe._ Natasha grits her teeth at the unbelievable amount of pain in Steve's tone. But this is what she meant to do, and if there is one person she owes an explanation to the most out of all them, it's Steve.

"Yes." She looks up.

Steve looks beyond hurt and confused - Natasha has never seen him look the way he is now. All of his unbridled anger from earlier is nonexistent. His hands are slack, eyes wide open and mouth parted like he is literally in pain.

"He trained you?"

"He did," Natasha says, just to have something to say to him.

"I -" Steve looks like he physically can't form words. "You never told me. All this time, you -"

Natasha feels the accusing betrayal fall on her like a slap in the face.

"I meant to," she says shakily, after a pause too long, "I was going to."

What now, Romanov?

She wants to laugh at herself. Did she think it was going to be any easy? What had been her plan, just to walk in and announce that hey, guys, the man they're harboring is not who they all think he is - oh, and by the way, she isn't who they all think she has been, too. And then what? Regale tales of cold winters spent as a child killing other children until the makers of the child made her almost immortal? Then walk into open, accepting arms?

"Wait," Bruce breaks the silence wildly, "Wait. Just wait." Bruce turns to her, looking completely bewildered. "You - That's not possible."

Should she thank Bruce for giving her an opening?

"Barnes is old as Steve," Bruce continues, still glancing around wildly like someone is going to fill in the blanks for him. "Based on what we know about HYDRA, they took over after the Union fell, which is during the end of the Red Room. That's not - you'd have to be at least a decade younger, you -" The bulb lights up for Bruce.

Tony looks up and away, looking extremely shifty and apprehensive, while Clint is as stony-faced as ever. Thor appears to be just as stoic.

"Jesus Christ." Bruce says, "What the fuck."

Some part of Natasha, a lighter part, remembers that months earlier they had made a joke out of the fact that Bruce is generally the most unflappable person on their team. They had found it ironic, Tony and Clint especially.

"The other night," Natasha fairly spits out, feeling her body tense up at the very thought of opening up her past. "That's what I wanted to tell you. I'm not a normal -" She breaks off, taking a deep breath.

It's a bandaid, Romanov. One pull and it's all over.

"Natasha." It's Clint's turn to fire a warning shot. She appreciates his caution with a quick glance, but it's time to move on. Clock's ticking.

When she speaks, her voice isn't as hoarse or shaky. It's loud and firm.

"I moved up in the ranks of the Red Room quickly," Natasha says clearly, leaning one elbow on a knee and gripping her other knee with her palm, " _Black Widow_ was supposed to be a title for the ones who graduated the program. They discontinued the title after it became my codename. You can guess why. I was good." She inclines her head almost coldly. "I went higher. The graduates, they become trainers, you know?" Natasha thinks. Remembers teaching fatal headlocks to a group of thinning ten-year olds. "It became beneath me. They stopped assigning me simple kill missions and planted me in governments, families of officials with bigger powers than the Red Room."

"So when you're that high up," Natasha nods, "You get attention. They sent the Winter Soldier to train me."

She breaks for breath and realizes that she has their rapt, undivided attention. They all look like they aren't breathing, even Clint, who knows about her.

"It wasn't anything I had ever learned in the Red Room. He... he went beyond. Under orders, of course," Natasha feels the need to add defensively, although no one so much as raises a brow. "I was put through every worst case scenario. Climates, injuries - I got a taste of everything, so I'd know how to deal with it. It was the same thing he had gone through."

_"Extreme frostbite is when you will feel warm, Natalia," the Soldier hissed, watching her fingers tear her shirt off in the freezing Greenland alps. "That's when you need heat the most. Find heat."_

"It was a test, I think," Natasha recalls the countless painful, horrific things she had had to do. "To see if I'd last, make it through the whole thing without dying."

"Why?" Tony demands finally, aghast. "What the hell for?"

Natasha slides her glance over at Steve, gauging him critically. Of course, there isn't any stopping the trainwreck she is on, and maybe she and Steve aren't who they were three hours ago. But he's still her friend - and she will want to protect him whenever she can.

But Steve is just staring, stricken and pained, slightly hunched over from all the emotional weight she's setting on him.

"They called the serum a gift." And here Natasha's hands twitch, still-hot anger rising within her. She doesn't think that fire will ever die. "I was to become the Winter Soldier's counterpart."

Steve's face opens in shock. And Natasha doesn't think she can make herself explain beyond this. She makes herself stop, bite her tongue and wait for the fallout. To see the general reaction before deciding her next words or actions.

Beside her, Clint leans forward, a protective move.

"Natasha is the last person in this group who needs a disclaimer, or protection. But I will say this. Before this week, there were only three people in the world who knew this, including Natasha, for about, oh I don't know, a couple of decades." His tone of voice turns slightly hard, defensive and protective all at once. "Take from that everything that you can, and make sure you damn well act nice on it."

Underneath the numbness seeping into Natasha's skin, she feels a rush of affection for Clint fucking Barton.

Bruce is still gaping, eyes wide, and Tony is just staring at her with that same look he had had on in the lab the other day. Natasha doesn't think the shock and hurt will ever leave Steve's features, and Thor, for some reason, is leaning forward, raising an eyebrow at her and Clint.

Thor looks mildly puzzled. "I see no reason why you might think anything would change. I," he stresses this delicately, "I have always thought that Natasha's exemplary prowess demanded respect more than anything." Thor strokes a big hand over his chin, thinking. "I have never treated you differently in the entire time we have been friends. Have I, Natasha?"

Natasha opens her mouth to deny this. "Of course you -"

Something about that sentence didn't fit right. She glances at Clint, eyebrows furrowing, to see if he's caught anything, but Tony lets his mouth fall open a little before turning to Natasha.

"You told Thor?"

So it isn't just her. Natasha blinks slowly at Thor, feeling like the rug had been slipped out underneath her feet, as the implications of his words slowly set in on her. "You knew?"

Bruce perks up, glancing between them quizzically. "What?"

It's not an alarming thought, Natasha finds as she watches Thor gaze at her - it's not unlike the look he had given her last night. For all the gravitas of an ancient legend, there is something inherently knowing, and almost fond, in the look he's giving her.

Thor's one-shoulder shrug is almost mischievous. "There are some extents to my... abilities," he says delicately, "I have known from the moment we met on the Helicarrier. As I knew of Bruce and Steve's talents." Thor inclines a head to Bruce and Steve before continuing. "Of course, I have never... could have never dreamed of the circumstances that brought you to where you are. But I see it not as a hindrance. You have always been excellent."

There's something in his voice at his final words that make even Clint and Tony sit up straight. Natasha is forcibly reminded, again, that Thor is an actual _god._

"I," Steve says, voice is hoarse and stricken, immediately catching the attention of the other five. He's gazing straight at Natasha, and there's something pleading in that gaze as he gets to his feet, gentler this time.

They all look at him, expecting something more, but Natasha is well-versed in Steve's silent words. That's why she doesn't say anything, simply watches as Steve turns and walks away, his steps getting faster and faster as he reaches the stairs. In fact, all of them are pretty well-versed in the need for silence and solitary in life-shaking moments, so they watch him go without protesting, a little more grimly than Natasha.

"What a night, huh?" Tony looks around bleakly. "I need a damn drink."

"Count me in," Clint mutters. His hand reaches out, seeking hers and squeezing it before he gets up. Natasha watches him leave, grateful and lighter, that feeling intensifying as Thor lightly brushes her shoulder with his hand as he leaves, too.

"Vodka on the rocks, Romanov, as per usual?" Tony says, hovering at the side.

"How about your finest scotch?" Natasha asks, mostly to gauge his reaction to her entire revelation.

"How 'bout my finest vodka, maybe?" Tony says, before turning to leave, a faint quirk to his mouth. Satisfied that Tony is alright, too, Natasha leans back, exhausted. Then she remembers Bruce, who's still staring, a little slackjawed.

Natasha can't help a snort. "Take your time, Doc," she drawls, "Let it sink in as slow as you want."

"Wow." Bruce shakes his head in disbelief, a smile spreading on his face. "So what now?"

Natasha shrugs, pulling herself up with both hands on the sofa. "Alcohol, I think."

Bruce nods, then accepts the hand she holds out and gets to his feet.

* * *

They had waited an hour before Bruce, the only one largely unaffected by last night's events, had seen through Tony's tired yet incessant babbling and Clint's increasing amount of beer cans and had subtly hinted that they all get some rest. This had been met with indignation largely from Tony's part, but Thor had kindly put down his glass and steered them all to the elevator while JARVIS had promised to alert them when Steve returned.

Natasha had tried closing her eyes, lying in the spare bedroom in her suite, but too much had happened. Too much had been revealed. She had never, in a thousand years, never imagined that anything would be happening the way it currently was. Natasha thinks it may be some kind of punishment for the way she has been lying to Steve all this while - even if they had been entirely by proxy, lies by omission - but she also thinks that she owes too much to the world to be resentful. 

She had dragged herself out of bed, put on her running gear and quietly left the Tower, heading to the park. Natasha had completed 4 rounds, pumping her legs to the extreme limit, feeling her already aching muscles pull and create more pain - but good pain, the distracting kind, before her thoughts had overcame the soreness and she had dropped down onto a nearby bench for respite.

Natasha owes too much to too many people. Her ledger isn't just some imagined thing she had cooked up for Loki's manipulation. It's very real in her head, and very painful too. She had left James. Left him to die, or at least to prolonged torture. This much is real, and this much weighs down on her chest like an anchor. Of course she knows, even if she forces it time and time to the back of her head, of course she knows the Red Room would have dealt with James for her betrayal. She has tried not to think about it. But it's there. 

_I was in love with you._

Natasha grits her teeth, her eyes scrunching up as the memories rise, unbidden. His scent, clean and a little metallic, in the sheets of their numerous beds, and then on her own skin. James, eyes wide and pupils dilated from the adrenaline of a mission, ripping his shirt off before tugging her to bed with a laugh. And some mornings, when the darkest part of the dawn gives way to the light, standing in their gear and guns strapped to their bodies, the smell of leather and metal in the air, and they allow one kiss - just one - before it's time to go. 

Natasha feels like her chest is going to tear apart. She stretches out her legs. It's time to run the fuck out of this pain. 

And then she pauses.

Natasha hears him coming before he makes himself known, so she lowers herself back into the stone bench. Whether or not Steve has made peace with Natasha's history, he obviously isn't quite used to it yet - she can hear him lingering at the edge of the park, footsteps getting closer and then farther - pacing, Natasha realizes with a mixture of exasperation and fondness, until eventually, he makes his way over to the stone bench Natasha has curled up on one end of.

"Can I sit?"

Natasha turns her head to raise one appraising eyebrow at him.

Steve stands there, hands loose by his sides. Natasha wonders about the state he has come in - is he angry? Does he despise who she is?

Natasha doesn't, and she suspects will never, need anyone's approval or acceptance. That's the thing about being practically immortal, she reflects a little bitterly, you have so much time and then you grow to learn, like she has, that the only that matters is - yourself. Herself. Natasha does not care for selfishness or arrogance. The truth is, herself is the only one Natasha can ever solidly depend on to get herself through the night. And Natasha has gotten through plenty of terrible nights.

She doesn't mean to do this, doesn't like to use tactics she employs on marks on anyone outside her job - but Natasha feels a slight wariness as she looks at him.

"Depends," Natasha answers him finally. Her voice is monotone, a blank canvas for Steve to draw his thoughts upon.

"Whatever it takes." Steve says stoutly.

Natasha holds her breath, and then lets go with it the calm, unaffected mask she has been presenting Steve with.

"Natasha," Steve says, pained, and then he's reaching for her hand. "I'm so, so - I'm so sorry. God. I'm so fucking sorry."

She grips his hand he sits down beside her. Because here's the thing:

Natasha doesn't have to be the last person standing anymore.

"I didn't mean to lie to you so much," Natasha tells him, "I didn't."

Steve's eyes are red. He gives her the shortest smile Natasha has ever seen on him. "I know."

"Especially about Bucky." Natasha feels, more than sees, the light shudder that ripples across Steve's back. She presses on, determined to finish this now that she's started. "I know how much you wanted to find him."

"I wish you would have told me," Steve says quietly, "Just a little bit would have been enough."

Natasha steels herself, feeling guilt wash over her again. She wants to explain herself, explain her motives and her thoughts and why she kept James Buchanan Barnes a secret from him for so long. But this isn't all about her, like Tony said.

"I guess it's a strange kind of fate that brought us together like this, huh?" Steve lets out an empty laugh. "Him training you, and after so many years, you and I coming together in an even stranger way." He looks down at his hands for a moment. "I couldn't have dreamed this up if I tried."

Natasha can, if she let herself wander into the darker, grittier side of what comes with having lived a life she has. It feels like it had all built up to this, coming together, full circle, in a weird, almost sadistic way.

"But then again, I couldn't dream myself up if I tried, too."

She meets his eyes. There's a lot of sadness there and god, has Steve ever looked _so_ tired... But there is also kindness in his gaze.

"Super soldier, huh?" Steve says lightly.

"Enhanced." Natasha corrects him. "I'm nowhere as good as you."

A ghost of a smile lifts his mouth. "Well, I don't know about that."

"Is that it?" She asks before she can stop herself.

His eyebrows furrow briefly. "What?"

"You just needed..." Natasha calculates mentally, "One hour for you to be okay with everything?"

"Do you want me to not be okay?" Steve quirks a brow. Natasha purses her lips, unsatisfied with this answer. She had wanted - well, expected, really, some form of Steve's usual deep, passionate speeches. He looks mildly confused. "I mean, we still have to deal with Bucky when we get back, so -"

"I meant me."

Steve stares at her.

Natasha would brand her tongue a traitor, except she hasn't had more than 4 hours of sleep for the last two days, and has recently had her face bashed in by a super soldier. Abruptly, she remembers that Steve has been dealing with James for a lot longer than she has. The dark circles under his still-red eyes don't deserve her impatience.

"Natasha," Steve says slowly, and also a little dangerously, "I'm not doing this with you."

Her lips part, shocked. "Steve -"

"Listen." Steve's voice slants toward pleading at the end, capturing her attention at once. "I've just had some shocking news about my guilty conscience handed to me by my own team. I kinda don't want to admit it, but..." He takes a deep breath. "Not all the things we just yelled about weren't true. And then I've found that the one person I've been trying to save the moment I stepped off that god damned ice -"

Steve breaks off, breathing harsh. Natasha wants to reach out, but she's almost awed. Steve has never exhibited his demons like this. They all have their different ways of expressing their rage - Tony and his workshop, Thor and the gym, etc., ...But Steve has always walked it off. Put forth his anger in words and not... Natasha takes in his shaking hands. Not like this.

"I know that I owe you something," Steve says quietly, "I know I do. And you deserve it - god, more than anyone you deserve to know that it doesn't fucking matter - you deserve to know. But right now, Nat - I just... I've got too much to handle." He lets out a slow, quiet breath. Far behind him, rays of morning sunlight slowly streams in through the trees. Steve looks at her, sad, tired, and just a little earnest.

There's a lot left unsaid between them, but she's always been good at reading between the lines. She knows what she deserves - but Steve deserves a friend right now. 

"Okay," Natasha says, and watches relief flood Steve's face as he takes her hand. "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 8 preview:
> 
> "This is the worst time for a party."
> 
> Natasha doesn't follow Clint's example and groan out loud, but she's doing something similar in her head. 
> 
> "It's gonna be fine. Just relax and try not to think about the unconscious assassin in the tower." They stare until Tony drops the overly bright smile. "Fuck it. This is terrible."


	8. hindsight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope your 2016 is going well so far! Please forgive me for spelling or grammar mistakes as this is unbeta-ed. I'm hoping to finish this story before the release of Civil War, so bear with me! Happy reading, you guys. <3

They sit there for some time without speaking. Steve has leaned back against his corner of the stone bench, and Natasha still has her feet curled up under her. Despite the darkness and cold of the park at this hour, she finds herself reveling in the whole thing. How the stone feels under her thighs, cool and hard and rough. How her skin is still erupting in goosebumps every now and then when the wind breezes through the trees. Above all - how quiet it is, even with Steve on the opposite side of the bench.

Natasha is almost loath to admit it, that she had missed it - missed the quiet calmness that came with not having anything to worry about. And although she had set foot in Stark Tower a mere three days ago, it feels like Natasha has spent a lifetime agonizing over James. And she has, hasn't she? It isn't like Natasha had left Russia and entered America with a clean slate. Well - she has to give props to Fury here, _officially,_ she has. But mentally? And emotionally?

She left him. Everything Natasha had done up to this point boils down to one, selfish, beautiful decision she had made, pacing in the cathedral in Italy years ago. Natasha had left James behind. Everything else is reasoning, rationalization - the human mind's need to create or blur unpleasant thoughts or memories to protect and preserve the current existing state of being. Without that instinct, deeply damaged individuals would tear themselves apart. And beneath all that skill, all that training, her body count, and the cool, standoffish exterior she presents to anyone she doesn't know - Natasha's emotions are very much human, too.

Natasha glances over at Steve when her thoughts become too heavy for her. He's still leaned back, staring off into the distance with a glassy look in his eyes. Natasha can't reconcile the man in front of her now with the man who had stormed the Triskelion and inspired SHIELD agents to revolt. She wonders what the biggest problem on his mind is - is it saving James? Is it the James who's here, and the Bucky he knew? And what about him? What about his own hurt feelings? She almost wants to hug him.

Sunrise dawns on them slowly, and the golden light starts to filter through the trees and surround them both when the sound of two phones vibrating rents the air.

Steve starts, reaching into his pocket. Natasha already has it out.

 **Emergency,** the text says. **Come back 2 tower.**

"Tony," Natasha says, worry blossoming in her chest. Steve pulls her to her feet and they run back to the Tower.

* * *

"Okay," Tony says conversationally, "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that it's my fault. And you know what? It is absolutely _not_."

"Tony," Natasha says sharply, this time with venomous feelings.

"I forgot. Okay? So many things happened, with you and Thor arriving and now with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Awakened -"

"Tony!" Natasha and Bruce say at the same time.

"We have to go." Tony says abruptly, like he's offering a solution to a problem. Natasha pinches the bridge of her nose. "We have to go, we can't skip out on it. It says right there, the Avengers are going." He waves the little white card in the air like it answers all of their questions.

Clint is by the coffeepot, squinting at the thick, embossed card in his hands like it's a diseased thing. "We can't go. I hate parties."

"That's completely besides the point." Bruce says, waving a hand at Clint, "But he's right. This is the worst time for a party."

Thor's card is lying abandoned by the toaster, where the man himself is standing. "I am always one for a good celebration," he starts ominously.

Natasha doesn't follow Clint's example and groan out loud, but she's doing something similar in her head.

Thor continues, flicking Clint an unimpressed look. "But it is an unwise idea. Especially in these trying times."

Tony holds both of his hands out. "It's gonna be fine. We'll all go, just relax, and try not the think about the unconscious assassin in the tower." They all stare in silence until Tony drops his overly bright, encouraging smile. "Fuck it. This is terrible."

Natasha sighs and leans back against the fridge.

Somehow, as she and Steve had raced up the Tower a mere five minutes ago, Natasha had not imagined that their latest installment in trouble would be a Tony Stark party. Which had apparently been pre-planned weeks ago, and Tony had forgotten to tell them. If she's being fair, this isn't the first time Tony has forgotten something like this, but its definitely the most inconvenient. Natasha almost wishes it had been some trouble with James instead of this.

Stark Industries appears to be throwing their annual fundraiser party. The cause is changed every year after SI pledges to match the donations, and this year appears to be aimed at contributing and developing better homeless shelters in the region. Star power equals more funds, so of course the Avengers are invited, as well as other well-known actors, politicians, and so on. Natasha knows and appreciates that it's for a good cause, but does it have to be this week? The one week that they all need to be left alone?

And the worst part is that Natasha can't even blame Tony for this. It's not the first time this has happened, and Natasha suspects it won't be the last.

Tony has a sly sort of look on his face as he traces the rim of his mug. "Now," he says slowly, and Natasha is a 100% sure that this can't be anything good. "Now that we've established that we're not going, who's telling Pepper?"

Natasha turns her head and glares at him. He acts like he doesn't notice.

Thor pointedly turns his attention to the toaster while Clint shakes his head, laughing. "Nope. Not doing it."

"Actually, Tony, you are," Bruce says dryly. "I specifically asked you a week ago what that fancy box was in the lab for. You said, and I quote," Bruce holds out his hands, gesturing, " _Blocking my space is what it is._ "

Tony opens his mouth to retort - and there's a sound from Steve who, up until this minute, has been quietly watching them the entire time, card in hand. He's the only one who's actually sitting at their table. It silences the rest of them and they all turn to him as one, quite dramatically in Natasha's tired opinion.

Steve has a dent in the middle of his eyebrows that hinted at his _I am Captain America_ persona. "Nobody's telling Pepper."

Tony claps his hands together. "You're right! You do it." He nods, looking pleased. "You owe us after that angsty fit you threw last night." Bruce shoots Tony an exasperated look. "What? Everyone's thinking it, I just said it." Natasha meets Clint's eyes and they share a quick, stifled grin.

Steve looks suitably abashed at this, eyes dipping to the tabletop briefly, but they flick up again, determined. "Nobody's telling Pepper because we're going."

Clint groans again.

"For one, I owe Pepper. I owe you too, actually." Steve nods at Tony, whose chin juts up uncomfortably. "You've been very good about letting us stay here. Housing Bucky and providing him with all the medical stuff." Steve sounds much more like himself, determined, like the man Natasha's received orders from in the battlefield, rather than the tired, defeated person they had all seen last night. It's oddly encouraging. "And the card does say that the Avengers go. So... we'll go."

This seems to do it - this breaks whatever spell that had fallen upon them. Suddenly, the kitchen is alight with movement. Clint strolls over and claps Steve on the back before settling down beside him. Bruce, a tad more helpful, brings over another mug of coffee for Steve before sitting down, too. Tony comes over and lounges beside Natasha, dragging out a " _Fine,"_ all the way, which everyone ignores. Thor comes over last, although its because he has in hand a plate piled high toast that he sets in the middle of the table.

"Feast!" He grins, slamming a hand on the table. If Natasha squints and turns her head just a little, it could be another Friday morning for them.

"It's not fine." Steve's gaze is serious, directed at Tony. "Honestly speaking."

"Can we not," Tony drawls. He reaches out and stuffs a piece of toast into his mouth, probably out of awkwardness, Natasha muses. For all that Tony is a loud-mouthed, trouble-seeking, confrontational guy, Tony is surprisingly uncomfortable with apologies. That is to say, heartfelt apologies, which is what Steve is trying to do, even if it's coming across as an odd mixture of earnest and inspiring.

Steve's seriousness doesn't waver. "I was out of line last night. I have a lot to say about that." He shifts, looking at Clint, a little wry now. "And to thank you for kicking my ass into clarity."

Clint gives Steve a lazy salute. "Apology accepted, Cap."

"Done and dusted," Tony adds. "Although we might not be applying forgive and _forget_ , per say - ow." Tony scowls at Bruce, reaching down to rub his shins.

Bruce clears his throat. "I think what we all mean, Steve, is that tensions were running high, and we're not exactly in an ideal situation." He shrugs. "It happens. Shit happens."

Steve looks aghast. "It's not that easy."

"Sometimes it is." Bruce's smile is kind.

"Let us move forward," Thor declares. His arms are folded across his chest. "What is our next move?"

Steve is still staring at them like he expects an outburst, but they all stare back, equally expectant, until eventually he lowers his eyes to the table.

"We need the Tesseract."

"Don't," Natasha murmurs to Tony, who promptly closes his mouth.

"Yes," Thor agrees like this has never been in question. "I will have to make haste to Asgard. This means, of course, that I will not be able to attend your party," he nods at Tony, "Which poses a problem."

Natasha privately agrees. "I think Steve is right. If only Tony goes, the media will raise a lot of questions."

"Not to mention we'd be single-handedly funding the gossip magazines for the next month," Tony says distastefully.

Steve grimaces. "So we go, and excuse Thor's absence somehow. Could we use Jane?" He asks Thor.

Thor squints, thinking. "I wager she would agree."

"I can do a sweep of my contacts," Clint suggests. "Natasha, too. We could see if anyone knows Thor's here. It's been a day and there's nothing about Thor in the press or internet, is there?"

" _Checking the internet, sir."_ JARVIS says.

"Thanks, bud. If there's nothing, we could plant rumors that Thor's somewhere else with Jane," Clint continues.

Natasha nods. "We could do that. It'll fuel marriage rumors if you're okay with that."

Thor makes a _meh_ face.

" _Nothing mentioning Thor in the press_ ," JARVIS says, _"Nor in the internet._ "

"Excellent." Tony grins. "Lets get those wedding rumors cracking."

"'Tis settled, then." Thor looks at Steve for confirmation, who shakes his head.

"Not yet. Natasha, Clint, can you both sweep your contacts now?" Steve asks. "I want to be absolutely sure. If there's nothing on Thor - plant the seed."

They nod and get up. Clint leaves the kitchen, presumably to his room, while Natasha retreats to the lounge, pulling out her phone. She sends a text to a few of the main information peddlers she still has leverage over after the SHIELD fiasco, making it look like she's wondering where Thor and Jane have gone instead of where Thor is. Her phone blows up almost immediately - Thor is the biggest person of interest, generally, and the replies flood in with questions of their own, cunningly worded, of course.

Natasha replies as aloof and teasing as she can get, and by the time she rejoins the others, she's confident they think Thor and Jane are at least vacationing privately. While engaged.

Clint has returned, too, and they are all seriously engaged in the politics of Asgard, and how Thor will proceed with the task.

"I cannot steal it," Thor states, "It is both illegal and against my morals." Bruce's mouth twitches. "I will have to make a formal request to the Allfather."

"Would he agree?" Steve asks, just a little desperately.

Thor heaves a heavy sigh. "I cannot say. His mood wavers, and this is not something to be taken lightly even if the Allfather is in the best of intentions to us. I would have to argue our point, and vouch for the Tesseract with my honor."

"Thor," Steve says, pinched.

Thor holds up a hand. "It is of no point to discuss this now, my friend. We have no time. Leave the matters of Asgard to me."

Natasha feels heavy, watching him speak. She feels like she's sending him into battle all by himself. "How will you argue our case?"

"I shall play into his favor," Thor rumbles. There's something sad about him as he speaks. "I will ask him to trust me with this as he has trusted me with Asgard in the past. It may take some time, but I will endeavor to return within a day or two."

"Thor, you're the real fuckin' MVP," Clint sounds awed.

"Tony has taught me of this term. Thank you."

"So we're doing this?" Bruce looks around at all of them. "Party tonight, Tesseract tomorrow?"

The mood collectively lowers, not fearful or sad, just something tense and hopeful, surrounding the six of them at one round dinner table. Natasha feels like the world outside of the small kitchen has slowed down to a heartbeat. This moment is something none of them will ever forget.

Eventually, Steve just nods.

* * *

The room is silent, save for the low thrum of the air-conditioner, as well as the sounds of traffic, some thirty floors beneath them. Natasha wonders at this setting, knowing very well that Tony is capable of soundproofing every room in the Tower. 

James lays in the middle of the white bed. His hands are cuffed, and his hair is loose. He's by the window, staring out of it. Natasha can't see his expression, but without it, he looks so innocent in his Stark Industries grey t-shirt and pants. Lying there with a blanket around his waist, he looks almost docile. Gentle and soft. 

She can recall all too easily the anger in his eyes when he punched her in the face. And she can, with even more ease, recall the man he was before she left Italy. It's kind of hard, but not really, reconciling these different images of him Natasha has in her head. It's not that complicated because at the heart of it, James as the Soldier was a mind unleashed. All of his strength and intelligence, enhanced or not, come to play without control. But last night had been a separate reality where, for the first time, the Soldier and James Barnes mixed together.

And maybe, Natasha thinks, maybe the part of him that wants to be killed is a vague recollection of Steve's Bucky Barnes.

She opens the door.

James turns immediately, eyes blank, face colored with surprise when he sees her. Natasha notes this carefully. So, no games tonight. Is all the fight in him gone?

Natasha decides to test the waters. "How are you feeling?"

He takes a moment to reply. His gaze travel slowly around her attire, the formal navy dress she has on, and the high heels. Natasha remembers, with a pang, that he's being very mildly (under Bruce's quietly angry statements " _I will not keep a him sedated on drugs_ ") treated, just to slow him down a little. Natasha, along with Clint, had pushed for complete sedation, if only because they aren't going to be in the Tower for a few hours. Yet they had relented under Bruce's disbelieving gaze, and Steve's blank facade. JARVIS is going to be on guard, more alert than ever, and Tony has a few of his suits around the Tower, ready to deploy in seconds if needed. 

But she's counting on his cooperation tonight. 

"Like shit," James answers finally. His chin dips. "Got me on drugs?" 

Of course he knows. Natasha gives a noncommittal shrug. "Something like that. That's not why you're feeling shitty, though."

"Hmm." His eyes close. Natasha wants to go beside him. "That's more to do with the one I pulled on all of you, huh?" 

She doesn't answer. She stares at him instead, trying to read him, trying to see if this is more deception and lies. Her gut is silent. And Natasha can't stifle the blossoming hope in her chest. 

James says, "How's Steve?" 

"He's okay." Natasha shoves her anger aside. It isn't personal, and Steve and James are none of her business. James' eyebrows furrows, and he looks pained for the briefest moment. "I wouldn't count on him coming to see you, though."

The hurt that flashes across his face is clear, but the smallest, wry smile replaces. "I guess I deserve that."

Great. More guilt and grief in the Tower to add to Steve's.

"Was this a suicide mission?" Natasha asks before she can stop herself. 

James looks at her. 

"You said a lot of things last night. I... don't know what to make of it." Natasha pauses, bites the inside of her cheek. 

"I'm dangerous, Natalia," James says softly, eyes dipping to the bed. 

"We can help you."

He shakes his head. 

"You don't know us," Natasha hears herself saying, "You don't know the lengths we will go to." 

"I'm fucked. In here." James taps his head. "You saw it, last night.  _I_ saw it. I couldn't - wasn't in control. Not exactly. It's just..." He lowers his head, teeth grinding and fists clenching. Natasha can a vein in his forehead standing out. She steps forward, controlling her panic. She doesn't want to trigger him, not right now.

"You're alive and you're here because you're _you_. If you were anyone else, I would have killed you a long time ago." Natasha tells him, voice low and clear. Some of the redness leaves his face, and his fists loosen. "You're here because we want to help you. Because we  _can._ I don't know for sure if this isn't just another act of yours." He looks at her, eyes widening. She doesn't want to decipher that. "I can't tell anymore. But that's on you. And I'll tell you that this is the end for you."

Natasha spreads her hands, making sure she has his full attention. "Beyond this, beyond me? There's nothing else that will fight for you like this. Think about that."

James' mouth parts. "I..."

She waits. He looks away from her. 

Natasha knows there's nothing more she can say to him. She's running out of time, and she doesn't want the others to know she's been down to see him. 

"James." Natasha waits until he looks at her. "Don't pull anything anymore. Not on the only people trying to help you." She turns and leaves, not waiting or wanting to see his reaction, because if James gives her any more of his blank, pained gaze, she might do something stupid.

Like skip this party and go lie down beside him.

* * *

Thor and Steve are already at the rooftop when Natasha steps out of the elevator. They're standing by the edge, deep in discussion. Steve has an intense expression on his face as they speak together in voices so low the wind doesn't carry it over, even to Natasha's enhanced ears. She hangs back, watching the impressive figures of her friends silhouetted against the lights of Manhattan, with Thor's cape billowing in the breeze. Thor claps a hand on Steve's shoulder and says something that has Steve hanging on to his every word. Then it concludes, so quickly Natasha doesn't expect it, and Steve looks up and waves her over.

"I didn't want to interrupt," Natasha says by way of greeting, walking over to them.

"You would not have." Thor says, then bows low. "You look wonderful!"

"She's alright." Steve says, mouth twitching.

Thor complimenting Natasha looks, as he always does on their nights out, brings something light and ordinary to Natasha's heavy feeling. She smiles at him, a genuine one.

"Have you spoken to Jane?" Natasha asks, sending Steve a withering look. Thor must be feeling sad, having to leave her as soon as he came.

Thor nodded. "Aye. I did not divulge the details of my mission, but she understands."

"You'll be back soon," Natasha says, hearing the hopefulness in her tone.

"I hope so." Thor's eyes turn a little glassy, imagining the ways it could go, Natasha assumes.

The elevator doors slide open behind them to admit Clint, Tony, and Bruce, all in well-tailored suits, courtesy of Pepper no doubt. Natasha knows for a fact that if allowed, Bruce will live in his basic shirts and pants.

Clint walks over, brisk and twitchy. "Comms in," he says curtly, tossing the small device at Steve's reflexive hands.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at the others.

"I don't know." Tony explains.

"He thinks something will go wrong," Bruce clarifies more helpfully, tugging at his navy tie every now and then. Natasha turns, catches Clint's eye and they exchange a significant look. She can feel the good mood that arrived just seconds earlier dissipating.

"Nat." Clint drops the last comm device in her outstretched palm.

Natasha sets it in her ear without further comment. If Clint's instincts are on guard, then she's on guard. If there's one thing Natasha has learned from their partnership all these years, its that Clint doesn't get twitchy for no reason. And Clint is probably the most relaxed, playful person here on the team, so that's saying a lot. She feels a sinking feeling in her stomach as, for the first time, the thought that Thor being in Asgard won't be their only problem enters her mind. Luckily, Tony baits her unknowingly.

Tony shrugs at her as he presses the comm into his ear. "I figured it was easier to just go along than argue."

"Now you know how I feel about you," Natasha replies with a sweet smile.

"I'd push you over if Pepper wouldn't be pissed if you missed the party."

"I would not be able to access this on Asgard," Thor is telling Clint intensely, "But I will carry it with me."

"Appreciate it, buddy." Clint pats Thor's forearm. "Ready for lift off?"

Thor raises his head to gaze at the sky. "Aye."

Steve steps forward and lays a hand on Thor's shoulder. "Take your best shot," he says seriously, looking him in the eye. "And thank you."

"Thank you, my friend." Thor nods at him, then raises a hand at everyone else. "May luck be with us all tonight."

They all step backwards as Thor points the Mjollnir to the sky.

"Heimdall," Thor intones, deep and loud, and then he's off.

Natasha doesn't think she will ever get used to it, even if she's seen him do it a hundred times before, the way the air surrounding him just _crackles_ as he lifts off into the sky. He keeps going, up and up until they can barely spot him, then it happens. A flash of bright, sharp light that silhouettes Thor's figure before whisking him into nothingness.

Steve snaps into action after it's done, pressing a finger to the comms in his ear. "Let's get going. Comms check," Steve says as he leads the way to the elevator.

Tony rolls his shoulders as he walks. "Iron Man."

"Black Widow." Natasha sneaks around and in the elevator before Tony does, earning them both an exasperated look from Steve.

"Hawkeye." Clint says. He still looks twitchy, which bothers Natasha greatly. She makes a mental note to talk to him alone later. There isn't any sense in putting Tony and Bruce on edge, and really, she doesn't want Steve to worry more than he already is.

Bruce is the last to walk in. "Banner."

"All set," Steve says, tightening his cufflinks as the elevator doors close. His voice is hard, but Natasha thinks everyone can hear, and feel, the nervousness in his tone. Nevertheless, Steve's face is a steel mask. "Lets go party."

* * *

An hour of mingling passes by before Steve's voice crackles in their comms.

" _Roll call._ "

They check in accordingly, automatically - and little patiently. This is the third roll call Steve's called in so far.

" _Iron Man._ "

"Widow."

" _Hawkeye_."

" _Banner_."

" _And before you ask,"_ Tony says with just a little obnoxiousness, " _Barnes is fine, JARVIS just checked in."_

" _Good_." Steve's voice and demeanor has gotten perceptibly terser as the minutes have trickled by. " _Carry on."_

Natasha retreats to the table with the hors d'ouvres that has been laid out in a pattern that mimics Van Gogh's Starry Night. She selects a small canape, not really intending to eat it on account of her uneasy feeling before backing to the windows and taking in the crowd. Natasha looks like she's simply people-watching, but she's really sweeping the place for Clint. He had disappeared the minute they got to the venue, which does very little for Natasha's already shaky confidence.

One part of her mind is focused on Thor, and how things may be going in Asgard. He had said it would take at least the rest of the night for him to come back with the Tesseract, and Natasha is loath to admit she almost wishes Odin would play favorites again and just let Thor bring the damn thing back here. While this worrying is going on, the rest of her mind is on James.

Tony had reassured them that JARVIS would be giving him updates every thirty minutes, and that he has set the Tower's protocols to the highest, most secure settings. If James so much as twitched a finger (in Tony's exaggerated words) the Tower would go into lockdown, and the offensive measures Tony has set in the Tower would take control and hold the fort until they can get back to the Tower.

The problem, Natasha thinks with dazed eyes as she fingers the canape, isn't if James would attempt to escape. It's more that there's a high chance James _would_ try to escape deliberately. _I have to be taken out, Natalia._

Her eyes narrow, all thoughts of James leaving her mind. She's just spotted Clint by the PA system control room. Natasha sets the canape down and circles around the hall to get to the control room, trying to avoid attention, when suddenly her earpiece crackles to life. It's Tony, on a private line.

" _Natasha_ ," Tony says in her ear, " _I don't know what you're stalking around the hall for, and I should be concerned but I'm not really. Can you go talk to Steve? He's starting to scare people._ "

Natasha comes to a stop and turns, scanning the room. Sure enough, there's Steve by the wall - with his arms crossed across his chest and a dark look on his face as he stares off into the crowd. He isn't exactly scaring people, but Natasha notes there is sort of a wide berth around him.

She hesitates, glancing at the control room. "Can it wait?"

" _Suuure._ " Tony agrees. " _Make sure its before he starts breaking things, or worse, people._ "

She resists the urge to seek him out in the crowd and glare. "Send Bruce?" Natasha asks as a last resort.

" _Bruce is talking to a STEM researcher who happens to a lady and single."_ Tony warns in a _don't you ruin this_ voice.

Natasha bites back a sigh and makes a quick decision. "I'm going."

She slinks back around the hall, going to Steve's dark little corner by the windows. She puts on a warm smile for the crowd as she approaches Steve. "How's it going, Cap?"

Steve starts a little at her voice, having been staring out of the window during her entire approach. He turns and gives her a tight smile. "I'm fine."

Natasha quirks an eyebrow and grabs two champagne flutes from a passing waiter. She hands one to Steve and they sip on it - or Natasha sips while Steve gulps down way more than he usually does. She eyes him shrewdly, considering if she should ask him to dance - maybe it'll help ease his tension - when their comms come to life with Clint's serious voice.

" _Guys_ _,_ " Clint says lowly, " _We've got trouble._ "

Steve becomes alert as Tony clicks in to groan. "What is it?"

" _We've got a couple unknowns o_ _n their way up._ "

Natasha and Steve exchange a look. "Now?" Natasha asks, her eyes flicking around the hall.

" _Yup. I had a feeling, was trying to see if anything's coming up. Spotted these guys in the lobby."_ Clint responds.

"Roger that, good work." Steve turns, scanning the room as well. "Bruce?"

" _I'll remove myself if necessary._ " Bruce says, sounding calm and confident. " _But are they military, Hawkeye?"_

" _Negative._ " There's an edge to Clint's voice that tips Natasha off at once. " _Contact tells me they're not."_

Natasha's eyes narrow. She feels like she knows, or at least she _should_ know, but there's something that isn't fitting quite right in this puzzle.

Tony clicks in to swear agitatedly. " _I can keep them out if we want. This is a private party, fuck._ "

" _We can take them,_ " Clint adds in, " _I see just three people. More pulling up outside, though. Looks official and organized._ "

"We're not doing that," Natasha commands. A course of action shapes up in her mind even as she speaks. "We're in public with about a dozen reporters with sources in here. If we slip up, create a scene, everything's over."

" _We should leave. Right now._ " Tony replies.

" _I agree._ " Bruce's voice is uncomfortable. " _With Thor absent, if they start asking too many questions -_ "

"I'll handle it," Natasha cuts him off smoothly. "Hawkeye, we have about two minutes left?"

" _Yep._ "

"Okay. This is what's going to happen. We are going to stay here." Natasha scans the entrance doors for signs of the officials as she speaks. "If we leave, they'll only catch up to us in the Tower. It's better to finish this off here. And secondly, if we leave and they come to know Thor's absent? That'll make it worse. Tony and Bruce, you two stay here on the floor and mingle. _Yes_ ," Natasha insists a little irritatedly as Tony predictably tries to argue. There isn't any _time._ "You're the most noticeable Avengers here. Stay on the floor, and _work_ the floor. _"_

" _Got it._ " Bruce replies, calm and collected. Tony mumbles some sort of affirmation.

"And Tony - contact JARVIS and make sure James is secure," Natasha says, hoping to hell and heaven that James cooperates. If they're here for what she think they are - then she and the rest are collectively screwed.

" _Roger._ "

"Steve -" Natasha turns to Steve as she speaks, and finds him staring at her with a blazing, ready look, not unlike the look she had when she first took orders from him in the Chitauri battlefield. "Stay here and mingle too, but not too much. I want you close by the exits, ready if I need you."

"I will be." Steve grounds out, determined.

Natasha nods, eyes returning to the entrance. "Hawkeye?"

" _C_ _lose to you but out of sight."_ Clint responds naturally, ready to roll as always. " _Something's wrong if they're coming right after Thor leaves._ _We need more time."_

"Three days, huh?" Natasha mutters.

" _Told you they jinxed it._ " Clint's voice suddenly perks up, alert. " _Nat - they're here. 10 seconds from the elevator._ "

She sighs and smooths down her dress. "Get ready."

"Flag us at the first sign of trouble," Steve tells her, then into the comms, "Everyone else is on standby."

The band strikes up a piece in violins and pianos, beautiful and lilting just as Steve moves into the crowd, a people-pleasing smile on his face. Natasha slinks around the room, heading for the exit, watching Tony hold court with Pepper and bunch of other old men and Bruce quietly but surely claiming a crowd of his own by the bar. She doesn't know where Clint is, and doesn't want to search for him, either, but she knows he's close by.

The doors open and two men in suits enter. They don't look like hitmen to Natasha - they actually look more like standard, office job workers, but she isn't taking any chances tonight. Clint is right - their timing is fishy. They separate, each one circling one side of the hall.

Natasha enters the crowd, fluid and moving among the other dances, keeping to the edges. She sweeps by the tables and then the entrance, where her eyes meet one of the men's gaze at the exact moment she slips a hand through his, pulling him into the crowd. He tenses and Natasha disarms him of the knife he pulls up immediately and smoothly drops it on the floor.

She cuts him off him silkily, winding his arm around her waist. "I'm just going to lead us into that room over there. No fuss, right?" Natasha slides her leg around his as she moves them, around the crowd, heading to the spare room by the side. "We can just talk about this. Nice and calm."

The man looks a little dazed as she speaks, then abruptly sharpens when she stops. His grip on her waist gets a lot stronger, and Natasha relaxes in return. It's so important for them to execute this without noise and fuss. They've already excused Thor's absence using Jane - one slip up and there is going to be a lot of questions they can't afford to deal with.

She deliberately lets him take the lead as they leave the crowd and near the room.

"My partner's here," He tells her roughly and unnecessarily. "So don't try pulling anything, Widow."

He yanks the door open and practically shoves Natasha inside. She stumbles in accordingly, withholding a sigh at the room - which turns out not to be a spare room, but a waiting room, lavishly decorated like the hall. Natasha mentally curses Stark Industries for its flashiness - in here, there are too many breakable things, but most importantly, there are two CCTV's in each corner of the room. Natasha would normally tell Tony to do his thing on them, but the he has a vicelike grip on her arm, and she doesn't want to give him a headstart on her - not for what she's got planned, anyway.

Natasha forgets she has Clint.

" _I've_ _got the cameras. You've got five minutes_."

Natasha slips under and around the guy so fast he's left blinking as she winds her legs around his midsection to pin him to the floor. He turns out to be trained and strong - he rolls off her and grabs her arm, pinning it behind her back. Natasha has her knee up and smashing into his chin, and then as his head flies back from whiplash, she's pulling him by his hair into a headlock.

"Who do you work for?" Natasha hisses into his ear. She's behind him, pinning his knees down with her own body weight. Her other hand has his arm twisted behind his back, her fingers pulling his pointed finger so far back that an inch more will definitely break it. "Who sent you?" She demands when he struggles without speaking.

" _Three minutes,_ " Clint warns.

" _W_ _hat's going on?_ " Steve barks.

" _Uh, Nat's attacking the guy._ "

Steve sighs.

Natasha ignores all of them. "Who do you work for?" She repeats, pulling his hair harder. He struggles even more, but she's got the leverage here. When she's sure he doesn't have a way out, she leans in closer. "I've got the Avengers in the building. If you don't start talking right now -" She pulls back his pointer finger and clamps a hand over his mouth to muffle his anguished yell. " - I will take your ass _down._ "

"You've - got this - wrong," he chokes out, "I'm - I'm from the Council -"

Natasha pulls his head back a little, though there's a sudden spike of fear in her throat. "How can I trust you?"

"ID -" He gasps. "I was - in SHIELD -"

Natasha feels around in his pocket, grabs his ID. "IDs are just paper," she hisses back into his ear. "Tony?"

Tony comes on, smooth and reassuring. " _Hold it up to the CCTV. Clint, tell me what you see._ "

Natasha shows the ID to the camera, firmly holding down the guy with her foot, as Clint relates the details to Tony, who will no doubt enlist JARVIS' help. This could be easier if Tony doesn't have to stay in the crowd. Natasha pushes down on the guy, just a little pressure-relief on her part.

" _Nat,_ " Tony comes on, serious and unhappy. " _He's legit. Ex-SHIELD, now in the Council._ "

Natasha closes her eyes momentarily. _Fuck._ She wants more. "What else?"

" _That's all I can get working from my phone._ " Tony says frustratedly.

" _Can you join Clint?_ " Steve asks. " _He's in the controls room."_

Natasha stares at the man's shaking figure beneath her feet as Tony replies that no, he can't because he's currently talking to a Senator. Her mind races. If the Council has sent someone then it can only mean one thing - Natasha has to play this differently.

She lets out a loud gasps and lets go of the man at once, scrambling backwards. Apologies fall from her lips as he bends over, rubbing his neck and coughing, trying to regain his breath. "Agent - I must apologize. I'm so sorry," Natasha gasps convincingly. "I didn't mean - it's just the Strike Team two months ago, they were all HYDRA, I don't know if you've heard -"

"The Triskelion. Yes." He stands up, shaking out his limbs. He eyes her with a lot less suspicion than he did before, in the crowd, but he still looks disdainful. Natasha can place his demeanor with more accuracy now - she's seen this act with a few of the upper echelons in SHIELD, and in the government. Its the look one gives to a dirty criminal who's been caught. Natasha handed out that look quite a lot in her career at SHIELD.

"It's a mistake. I'm sorry. I really thought -" Natasha breaks off, rubbing her forehead guiltily. She hands him his ID gingerly. "Jesus. I could have killed you."

A brief look of consternation passes over his features and he rubs nonexistent lint from his shoulders pompously. "I'll let it go."

Natasha nods repeatedly, taking a step back, her tone and manner much more professional, much more SHIELD Agent Romanov. "My apologies."

"I'm here on official business." The agent says, staring down his nose at her. He pulls out a piece of paper.

Natasha braces herself.

"Former agent Natasha Romanova, you are under arrest by direct order of the World Security Council. Any further questions or objections will be redirected to the Council. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say ..."

Natasha barely listens as he states her rights, in lieu of listening to the explosion happening in her comms. Bruce is confused, Tony is pissed off and Pepper is calming him down in the background, and Steve's just about beside himself in anger. Clint is the only one trying to calm everyone down.

" _I'm coming in,_ " Steve insists, and already Natasha can hear him moving away from the crowd, " _Stay where you are._ "

" _He's not leaving this building with you._ " Tony promises, while Pepper says, " _Keep smiling, Tony,_ " urgently in the background.

"No," Natasha says out loud. Steve can _not_ come in here.

" _Natasha,_ " Steve says, frustrated.

The agent stops, surprised, and his look wavers. "Excuse me? This brooks no arguments, former agent." He waves the paper at her. "I've been sent -"

"By the Council, yes." Natasha tries to speak quickly, to save time. "But you do have to tell me the reason for my arrest." He stares. Natasha gives him a smile. "I know my rights, agent. I did work for SHIELD, after all."

There's a pause. "You are under investigation," the agent says slowly, sounding very much like he's enjoying this, "For possible fraternization with a known war criminal, and possible enemy of the state." He pauses then adds, even more slowly, "James Buchanan Barnes."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 preview: 
> 
> 'The first words James speaks since he came to the Tower to anyone who isn't Natasha are, "Natasha is my handler."'


	9. continuum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of familiar faces in this one! Please forgive any spelling or grammar mistakes. We're wrapping this up soon enough. Happy reading.

To any observing outsider that the tactful team of Steve, Tony, Bruce and Clint haven't already cleared from the exits in the building, the men in suits surrounding the neutral-faced redheaded woman can be nothing more than a group of bodyguards escorting their client out of the building.

But there are only two things on Natasha's mind as her heels echo around the empty lobby.

James. Thor. _James. Thor._

The men surround her 5 to 1. She can easily take them out, but it wouldn't play into the bigger scheme of things. As far as the Council is concerned, they're trying to dig up dirt on James by attacking Natasha. This will no doubt lend credibility to their defense when they prosecute James at the end of the five days Fury had promised her, which is why they should be playing this as safe as possible. Natasha is highly aware of the scrutiny on her - she had had enough foresight to act like her taking on the agent earlier had been a miscalculation borne by the takedown at the Triskelion. She can play that off as her paranoia. But Natasha has to be as cooperative as possible - or at least, as cooperative as she's willing to act - which is why she's been nothing but politely curious as they escort her out of the building. Her backtracking in the waiting room had at least persuaded the agents to leave out the handcuffs. Natasha can only imagine, with heavy distaste, what will happen if anyone managed to get a picture of her in handcuffs.

"We're heading straight to the Council's base," the agent tells her as he opens the door of a black car.

Natasha nods and watches as he closes the door and heads to the passenger seat. A beat later, another male agent gets into the backseat with her. Natasha spots his concealed gun without even trying. Tony will track her location somehow, she has faith in that, but once they get to the base she won't have any means of communicating with them. The agent had already, rather cleverly confiscated the comms she was wearing in the room. Natasha can exercise her right to a phone call, of course, but that would create mild suspicion, which is the last thing she needs. She's hyper aware of the fact that Thor's absence, if questioned, can lead to a legal and political maelstrom for not only her and Thor, but every one of them for even planning it in the first place.

Right before her comms had been confiscated Clint had spoken to her, quietly assuring, that he'll do the best he can on their end. Natasha hopes to high hell this means taking care of James - as in, preparing a contingency plan in case her arrest goes south and they come straight for the Tower. She's confident that other than that, Clint's got it covered - he has been playing the field and the bureaucracy in America for longer than she has, after all.

All Natasha has to do is figure out the Council's game here.

She restrains a sigh. Easier said than done, and yet playing the government has been easier for her in the past when no one's lives was hanging in the balance.

They drive on for quite some time, probably for security purposes, before driving into what looks like an underground parking lot. Natasha has only been to the Council's base once or twice, both for unrelated official reasons, and she has used a different, more official entrance both times. She muses that this way is probably only used for would-be criminals they're planning to charge.

The agent opens the door for her, and grips her elbow when she gets down. This irritates Natasha so much that she's turning to him, very slowly, before she can stop herself. There must be one hell of a look on her face, because he drops his hand a second later. Natasha gets surrounded once again by the other agents, as they walk inside through white columns, turning left and down a long corridor that leads to a silver elevator that pings open the second they get close. Natasha's eyes flick up. There's a CCTV in the corner, the sixth one she's counted so far.

She is lead down even more corridors, their heels clacking sharply on the floor, and no one bothers to tell her where they're going. Natasha examines their surroundings as subtly as she can with two men on the either side of her. So far there are more CCTVs, some so small you can't even tell they're there - this means the doors they're positioned above must hide something classified - and the doors they do walk through are opened by the agent's fingerprint and a retinal scanner.

Natasha idly considers the probability of her success, should she choose to make a run for it now. She's confident that she can get as far as outside the parking lot, as the CCTVs will give her away, and then it's an even, 50-50 chance of her actually leaving the base. Just because there aren't any visible guards, doesn't mean they're not there. Natasha's knives have been stripped away from her, as well as the small revolver she had strapped to her thigh earlier this night, but she chose these specific high heels with a weapon in mind. The five-inch stilettos have come in very handy in the past.

They pass a brown door, then stop at the door beside it. The agent uses his ID to open the room (not important, then) and ushers her inside without making eye contact. It's brightly lit with a long white table and chair inside. A woman is sitting there, with sandy brown hair that reaches her shoulders and a sharp black suit and skirt. She stands up when they walk in, and Natasha's breath hitches as she instantly recognizes Councilwoman Hawley.

She stands up when they walk in, eyeing the agent. "You left off the handcuffs?"

The agent doesn't visibly falter, but Natasha knows a reprimand when she sees it. Plus, his tone is slightly defensive when he says, "She agreed to come quietly. I didn't think it was necessary."

"Son," Hawley says in her polished British accent, "This is the Black Widow." Hawley shifts her gaze to Natasha for the first time, expression neutral as ever. "Hello, former Agent Romanov. We meet again."

"Councilwoman Hawley." Natasha replies carefully, watching her, as the agent makes her sit with a push to her shoulder. "I wasn't sure you'd be reinstated."

"Well, what can I say." Hawley sits down, calm as anything. "I was asked to be on board with surprising speed and little hesitation given my willing cooperation during Captain America's coup." She looks up sharply.

Natasha remembers intercepting and effectively kidnapping the Councilwoman at the airport before she even set foot on the tarmac. Her face barely twitches a muscle as Natasha stares back. "I'm glad your contribution didn't go unmissed."

Hawley's lips thin. Natasha is aware that the woman is mapping out her reactions by the way Hawley's eyes flit around her face. She presents her with a politely bland expression, not wanting to fuel the flames any more than she can help it. Hawley isn't a spy by any means, but Natasha recalls perfectly that this is the woman who voted to have Manhattan nuked during the Chitauri invasion.

Something in Natasha's expression shifts minutely at this reminder.

Hawley looks away and picks up a yellow file on the table, saying briskly, "I'm not here to be your enemy, former Agent Romanov. If anything you're here to help us defeat the enemy." She picks up a yellow file and fixes Natasha with a hard look. "This is how it's going to work. I'm going to ask you several questions pertaining to the reason of your arrest, and you are going to answer them. Your answers will be noted and used in the future. Should you choose not to answer any or all questions - well, that will be noted, too, and used as well."

 _Against you_ , Hawley does not say, but Natasha can read between the lines well enough. At least this gives Natasha a vague image of how she should play this interrogation. Had Hawley been accusing right off the bat, Natasha would have chosen to play innocent and get Hawley to change her mind. But the Councilwoman is simply being - well, _hard_. This tells Natasha that Hawley either has not made up her mind about this case, or is simply carrying out her obligations as a Councilwoman. Both are incredibly different mindsets - but still, something Natasha can work with.

"Of course." Natasha says agreeably. She folds her arms in her lap naturally, glancing down at the file with a mildly curious look. "Like I told the agent, you have my full cooperation. And please - just Romanov will do."

Establish rapport. Play all cards on the table - or at least, make her think they are. Natasha makes sure her body language isn't threatening, nor is it non-threatening. Hawley's admonishment of the agent shows Hawley's clearly not underestimating her. Natasha will have to walk a delicate balance between believable and non-believable.

Hawley blinks. "Very well, Romanov." She opens the file. Natasha catches a glimpse of James' faded photograph at the top left corner. "Are you familiar with James Barnes?"

"Member of the Howling Commandos. Captain America's best friend." Natasha recites with a slight smile. Hawley doesn't look amused. Natasha shrugs. "Yes, of course I am."

"You learned - or were taught - of him and American History in the Red Room, yes?"

"Yes," Natasha answers. Her body stills, but she fights to not let it show. As far as anyone other than Fury, and now the Avengers, are concerned - Natasha is a young woman, more than a few years into defection to the States. Another secret to protect.

Hawley glances at her. "What is your opinion of the Winter Soldier?"

Natasha tilts her head slightly. "What is my opinion?"

"Your opinion." Hawley repeats.

Natasha takes a deliberate moment to blink and shake her head. "I'm sorry, you need to be more specific. My opinion on the Soldier's record, myth? Fashion sense?"

"Romanov," Hawley warns.

"Fine. Why don't we cut ahead?" Natasha suggests politely, leaning forward. "I don't see the point in asking me questions you already know the answers to." She assesses Hawley, wondering the directions her answers could go. "The Winter Soldier was a myth. And now he's not. But you already know that, Councilwoman."

"Very well." Hawley snaps the file shut, leaning forward as well. Natasha sees immediately that cutting the chase had been a good move on her part. Hawley's needless questions were clearly some sort of test, although it bores Natasha to think of _why_. "Sergeant James Barnes is the Winter Soldier."

Natasha doesn't blink. "Yes."

"The crimes that the Winter Soldier has committed over the decade, according to SHIELD intel that you and many others have contributed to," Hawley adds sardonically, "have been committed by Sergeant James Barnes."

"If the crimes have been committed by him at all, then yes." Natasha shrugs delicately at Hawley's raised brow. "The Winter Soldier operated over a decade. I don't think I have to give you a refresher on the Cold War, here - many of the war crimes committed then and until recently weren't all committed solely under HYDRA's orders, not that we know of." Natasha inclines her head. "Some of them can simply be false claims attributed to the Winter Soldier as a scapegoat."

"But the crimes that we do know of, including the recent attacks on SHIELD at the Triskelion were committed by him." Hawley states questioningly.

Natasha tamps down a flare of frustration at Hawley's single-minded questions. "While he was under HYDRA's influence, yes."

"Hmm." Hawley interlocks her fingers, watching Natasha. "In the aftermath of the Triskelion incident, Captain Rogers chose to go looking for James Barnes. Brief me on what you know of this."

Natasha explains, from her pulling files from her sources in Kiev up until their last meeting at the grave. She speaks surely and without hesitation, because she doesn't need to lie here, not seeing the need for misdirection or lies - by the direction Hawley's questions have gone, Natasha has a pretty good feeling that they are just a set of cleverly worded questions to see if Natasha has been in the know about James' location. The jig is effectively up, and Hawley confirms just as much with her next question. Natasha also explains, briefly, what she knows of Steve and Sam's travels.

"I see," Hawley says with a brisk nod. "And do you know anything of James Barnes' current whereabouts?"

Panic strikes her mind almost as quickly as a deep calm settles over her. Natasha's already decided how to play this.

"I thought we agreed you wouldn't ask me questions you already know the answers to."

Hawley's eyes widen in surprise. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, he's at the Avengers' Tower," Natasha says conversationally, tilting her head slightly. There's no surprise on Hawley's face now - Natasha is right. She sends her best hope above, and drops her ace card ever so softly next. "As he has been for the past day."

This time, Hawley's eyebrows rise up. This is new information, and Natasha must play it accordingly if she doesn't want the whole lot of them to get arrested. "You are saying that Sergeant James Barnes arrived in the Avenger's Tower yesterday?"

"I wouldn't say _arrived_ , exactly," Natasha makes a thoughtful face, "Captain Rogers brought him there in a state of medical emergency."

Hawley's tells are getting easier and easier for Natasha to read. She opens the yellow file again and scans it, clearly lacking the information Natasha is feeding her. To her credit, she remains calm.

"Medical emergency?"

"Yes. Barnes suffers an extreme form of PTSD among others, due to the intense brainwashing he was forced under for the past decade." The words slip from her mouth a little too bitingly. Hawley looks up. Natasha shrugs. "Captain Rogers must have thought that Dr. Banner, who is at the Tower, would be of great help to Barnes. He was right."

Hawley is actually speechless for a brief moment. "He is being treated there? By the Avengers?"

Natasha makes sure that her tone is condescending when she says, "Of course he is. What else would we be doing?"

This time, Hawley actually gets up, taking the file with her. "Thank you, former Agent Romanov. I'll be back."

Natasha lets out a slow, relieved breath when Hawley leaves, closing the door behind her. Or as slow and relieved as she can get, with the cameras in the room monitoring her every move. Her thoughts immediately return to James.

If Natasha's calculations are right - and so far they have been right - then Hawley will come back and insist on bringing James into the WSC's custody. The Council has probably been running on the (accurate) intel that James has been in the Tower for a few days, and that the Avengers are covering up for him because of the obvious connection between Steve and James. They probably arrested Natasha to verify the info they have before moving in - Steve is impossible to interrogate, especially after the Triskelion coup he instated, and Tony is even worse, possibly the worst of them all. They will avoid Bruce for obvious reasons, and as far as they know, Clint has been M.I.A (or just on his farm) for a long time, and Thor is generally oblivious to everything happening. Natasha is the obvious, risky choice here.

But now that Natasha has pulled the rug under their feet, they will be reeling. The obvious next move for the Council to do is to bring James into custody, and Natasha will play their strengths - that is, rely on James' mental illness along the fact that Bruce has started the treatment to keep him in the Tower. The Council tends to back down whenever Bruce is brought into the equation, as Natasha has learned in the past. It mildly sickens her to play on James' condition and Bruce's responsibility to keep this game going, but there's just no choice. The fact that Natasha freely gave them information, going as far as to invite them to see him will pull the tide in their favor, just a little. It also means that whatever happens from now on, happens on Natasha's terms.

But this adds another huge worry onto her list - Natasha has to find a way to update her team, to keep them all running the same lie. If one of them slips, its game over. Not to mention the fact that Thor's departure has been burning at the forefront of Natasha's mind ever since he left - if anyone, _anyone_ gets wind of what they have done, and what they are about to do, the consequences will literally be catastrophic. Thor's presence will be called into question, and Natasha shudders to think of what could happen, and how it will affect them all.

" _Natasha._ "

Natasha actually gives a visible start, her heart pumping loudly as her lips part in a gasp.

" _Did I shock you? Holy shit, I shocked you. This is on tape. This is one for me, Barton, zero for you. What a historic day._ "

A tidal wave of relief sweeps through Natasha's body, followed by a deep yet fleeting desire to kill Tony Stark. She sits still as she can, trying not to react, although every inch of her body wants to turn towards the CCTVs and speakers emitting Tony's voice.

There are some sounds of rustling before Clint speaks. " _Nat, don't worry. We've secured the cameras in here, we've got maybe two minutes._ "

Natasha doesn't move.

Clint makes a sound of comprehension. " _We've got the cameras outside, too. No one is watching. JARVIS will cut the line the second someone comes in sight._ "

Two minutes. Natasha can do this. "Clint, I've switched up the story. We -"

" _We got everything._ " Clint says. " _Tony hacked in when Hawley was asking about the Triskelion crimes. He only just managed to secure the cameras outside._ "

" _Hey, hacking into the Council is hard_ ," Tony protests. The camera moves to focus on her a little better with a small whirring sound.

Natasha doesn't care. "This is as good as any. Sit rep?"

" _Barnes is prepped. Still no sight or sound from Thor. Steve is agitated, wants to break into the Council to get you. Bruce is making coffee._ "

" _Normal day at the office_ ," Tony chimes in.

Clint says, " _I take it you'll be showing up with another Strike Team_? _"_

 _"_ Yes. Hopefully not to arrest anyone." Natasha says darkly. "Clint, you have to be out of sight. Steve has to take -"

" _Incoming!_ " Tony suddenly barks, and Natasha has just enough time to recompose herself, the camera swiveling back to its original place, before the door opens a few seconds later. Hawley is nowhere to be seen, but the agent from before is there. He's joined by another tall woman, an agent judging by the looks of her, and they're flanked by a couple of well-built guys. Definitely Strike Team.

"Former Agent Romanov." The agent says and nods to the Strike Team guys. They come over to escort Natasha to her feet. He waits until she's standing and properly surrounded by the guys before continuing. "The charges against you have been dropped on the account of your cooperation with the investigation."

Natasha blinks. She had hoped, but definitely didn't anticipate this. She nods. "Thank you," Natasha says slowly, waiting for the catch. There has to be a reason they're surrounding her with highly trained agents.

He nods before gesturing to the man and woman, who have been silent spectators so far. "These are Agents Boone and Kent. They will be taking over the investigation at this point."

The man, Agent Boone, steps back and gestures to the door with his head. "We're heading to the Avengers' Tower now to validate the information you have given us."

Well, Natasha thinks, at least they're somewhat prepared for this.

* * *

She's put through the same routine as before - black tinted windows in the car, about 20 minutes of driving and complete silence until they reach the Tower. Natasha can't see what's going on through the windows, but she can tell, out of learned familiarity, that Tony isn't opening the door that will lead to the underground garage for them, like he always does for her and the rest - or at least, he's programmed JARVIS to do so.

The door is opened for her, just as before, and Natasha steps out of the car. She immediately sees about two other similar cars behind the one she just exited, and feels her stomach drop to the floor. They'd brought along reinforcements, which means they're planning to take James back. Her earlier humor vanishes immediately and ice floods through her veins. They'll be banking entirely on James' interrogation to save him. Not even Natasha can magic something now.

They're made to go through the front, revolving doors of the Tower, where they're promptly held up by about a dozen security checks, Tony's doing no doubt. It's followed by an equally thorough check on everyone's IDs and background. JARVIS, who is basically running the entire security check aside from the posted guard who does nothing more than stand at the door with his arms folded, is incredibly dry and unhelpful when the agents try to speed up the process. Tony's clearly taking the piss out of them, which the agents notice - sometime after ten minutes they turn to look at her. Natasha offers them a bland shrug.

When their IDs no longer send off ringing alarms throughout the lobby about six more minutes later, Natasha notices that one group of Strike Team agents are left in the foyer, while the rest follow her and Agents Boone and Kent to the elevator. They're anticipating a trick, or some sort of an escape. Whose escape? It's clear they don't trust the Avengers. Although this little visit is happening on Natasha's terms, she's smart enough to know that the Council will take advantage of this to find even the tiniest loophole that they can exploit.

Boone and Kent hesitate briefly, looking at each other. Natasha knows that they're completely at loss as to how the building operated, but she opts to stand there blithely, assuming a politely curious air, until JARVIS breaks the silence.

" _May I know which floor you are heading to?"_

They exchange a look. Kent speaks. "We would like to speak to Mr. Stark first."

The elevator moves at once and stops, to Natasha's surprise, on the tenth floor.

" _The lounge_ ," JARVIS announces. Natasha flicks a look at the camera, knowing full well that the actual lounge is on the 20th floor, and this floor is usually used for general parties that Stark Industries have to hold every now and then. It looks like the guys have a plan. The thought comforts Natasha more than she thinks it will.

Tony is on his feet and booming at them the moment they step out of the elevator.

"Natasha Romanov! You missed the party, you devious thing." Tony announces, standing in the middle of a sofa arrangement. He winks at the agents and gestures with a glass of what looks like scotch. "If I'd known the speeches were going to be as boring as they were, I'd have gotten myself arrested too." Tony pauses, then narrows his eyes at Natasha. " _Un_ arrested, now, right? Charges dropped and everything."

"Mr. Stark -" Boone begins sharply.

"Now, now, no need for that. We all know I know everything." Tony says breezily. He eyes the remaining Strike Team members who are positioning themselves around entrances. "No security inside the house, it gives me allergies."

Natasha supposes she should probably step in now. "Tony, these are agents Kent and Boone from the World Security Council. They're here to see Sergeant Barnes."

"I see." Tony says sounding extremely unconcerned. "Visiting hours are long over, as it is now a very late 2 a.m. -"

"Mr. Stark." Kent steps forward briskly. "I'm not sure you understand the magnitude of our visit. Former Agent Romanov has given us intel that Sergeant Barnes is receiving treatment here. We expect your full cooperation in this investigation, lest you fall into dangerous waters yourself."

Natasha grinds her teeth at the veiled threat, hoping that Tony will keep it together.

"Well, first of all," Tony holds up a finger at Kent, "First of all - _intel_? This isn't some top secret classified information that we've been dying to keep from you. It's just like, news. The guy's only been here a day, and nobody's bothered to ask."

Kent and Boone are silent, though their expressions sour visibly.

"Secondly, I don't answer to SHIELD or the Council or whatever it is you call yourselves these days. I answer to Captain America, let's say, 40 per cent of the time?" He squints at Natasha, who stares back at him. She's beginning to understand that Tony's here as a distraction. "And lastly, who says _lest_ anymore?"

Agent Kent actually rolls her eyes. Boone's lips thin. Considering they both have barely twitched a muscle all this while, Natasha is kind of impressed.

Tony suddenly cocks his head, staring at something behind them. "Speak of the devil and he shall appear! I mean, Captain America. My bad."

"Thanks, Tony." Steve says dryly, entering the room. The agents stand to attention at once, and Natasha notices even the Strike Team guys straightening themselves. Apparently not even Council members can resist the pull of Captain America. Steve glances at Natasha as he nears, but just like how Natasha and Tony have been doing just now, there's barely any significance to their looks. Steve is typically one to ask about his teammates wellbeing, but everyone there is aware of the delicate fragility the situation is, and how the smallest slip up can bring them all to destruction.

"Captain." Boone says, stepping forward to automatically clasp Steve's outstretched palm. Natasha approves this. Creating rapport will further their cause. "We're here on a very sensitive case. It's come to our attention that the Winter Soldier, or Sergeant James Barnes is being medicated here. There is a need for special investigation."

Steve tilts his head, nodding. "Isn't that why you arrested Romanov?"

Boone's look flattens a little. "Yes, well, the charges against her have been dropped in lieu of the information she provided us with."

"I see." Steve nods again seriously. "Are you here with a warrant of any sort?" Boone and Kent exchange a look.

"We're here simply to inquire," Kent says, "There isn't an official need for a warrant - as of now no one is being charged with anything."

Steve half-smiles at them. "That must be why there are four Strike Teams in the building."

"Formalities, Captain, as you very well know." Boone says briskly. "I'll lay it out for you. We're just here to see and question Sergeant Barnes on a few things. Former Agent Romanov has made it sufficiently clear that he isn't in his right state of mind." Boone glances at Natasha. "We'll also speak to Doctor Bruce Banner regarding his condition. And then each of you involved in this matter will be put through routine questioning to get all the facts right. This isn't a light criminal offense we're talking about, Captain. We're dealing with a assassin who has innumerable offences under his belt."

Steve's tone is a little hard. "Formalities, huh?"

Boone shuts up.

"Captain, surely you understand." Kent attempts to dispel the tension in the room. "My colleague laid out the routine of what is to happen. But our only objective right now is to validate former Agent Romanov's claims. And those are," She opens the file in her hands. "Sergeant Barnes is alive and present in Stark Tower; Sergeant Barnes is mentally and physically impaired and is in need of medical attention; and lastly; Sergeant Barnes' medical needs can only be fulfilled in Stark Tower, under Doctor Banner's supervision."

 _Don't push it_ , Natasha wants to warn Steve. She would be boring holes into his face if the agents aren't present. All Steve has to do is go along with the plan and let the Council connect the dots Natasha has sketched out for them. Steve's (albeit, reasonable) ragging can and will screw things up.

Tony must be thinking the same thing, because he suddenly steps in, turning up his obnoxiousness by a notch. "Well, lucky for you Banner is working on something in the lab, and can be persuaded to talk. I wouldn't be volunteering to wake him up otherwise, ya know?" Tony mimes roaring like the Hulk.

"Is Barnes awake?" Natasha asks Steve deliberately, trying to get him back on track. She puts on a humored, weary tone, like this is just a tiny hiccup in a normal night, and smiles at the agents. "The sooner we settle this the sooner we get to sleep."

Thankfully, Steve's calmed down enough to go along with her. "Yeah, you're right. My apologies, I guess I'm just a little cranky. You're just doing your jobs." He offers a smile to the agents, too. They don't look too mollified, but the tension eases. Steve turns. "Tony, can you ask Bruce to meet us outside Barnes' room?"

* * *

Natasha folds her arms across her chest as Bruce, in his glasses and lab coat explains away to the agents with a clipboard under his arm.

Her team had orchestrated this entire meeting down to it's minute details. For one, they aren't currently in Natasha's suite. James had been shifted down, to the floor below the supposed lounge they were in earlier. The room had been arranged to look like a sickbay as opposed to the security-reinforced room James was in previously. Natasha can see the touches of Clint's spy-side in the arrangement, how James' hair is loose and around his face, stubble unshaved, his clothes strewn on the corner of the room to make it look like he's just arrived. As far as the agents are concerned, this is where James has been getting treatment for the past day.

What Natasha knows is that this particular setting and the room they're in, are both completely under JARVIS' control.

Natasha and the rest are behind a one-way mirror designed to look like a painting. The agents were introduced to it simply as a sitting room outside the sickbay - the Strike Team, after further exaggerated obnoxiousness from Tony, have been stationed outside the hall with the exception of three guys to follow the agents inside.

Bruce had come up from the lab, shook hands with everyone, polite and fidgeting as usual, and then stepped inside the room to explain James' condition. But the moment the agents stepped into James' room with Bruce, Tony did his magic and they soon could see inside the room. Tony had handed Natasha a new set of comms earlier, so they're all reconnected on their channel. With Bruce inside, and Tony's additional tinkering with JARVIS' settings, they can all listen to the ongoings inside the room quietly and secretly.

The minute they were all alone, Clint had rolled down from the air vent and joined them.

"I prepped them best I could," He's explaining to Natasha quietly. "Told Bruce to act as necessary - sell it so hard that they won't have a choice but to leave Barnes in our care."

"Looks like he's doing a pretty good job." Steve says grimly. He's standing behind them with Tony, who's busy on his phone configuring the CCTV settings to keep an eye on the Strike Team outside.

Natasha agrees, watching Bruce gesture and frown as he describes the condition of James' physical body. "Keep this up and maybe we get out of this alive." Well, as long as James manages to keep up this act. She turns to Clint. "What did you tell James?"

"Nothing," Clint says. "We just showed him the stream from your interrogation at the Council." He slants an undecipherable look at her. "Seemed to do the job pretty well."

James himself is on the bed, looking for all the world like a haggard traveler with an IV in his arm. The sheets are cotton white, as is his standard Stark Industries issued shirt. So far he's exhibited nothing out of the ordinary - as Bruce speaks, James simply watches them, turning to occasionally look out of the window. Bruce and the agents are standing far away enough that normally a person couldn't hear them, but Natasha knows James can, and hopes he will use this to his advantage.

"He better not screw this up." Clint mutters suddenly. He sounds a little worried, as he rightfully should be. Officially, Clint isn't on the radar at all - he's supposed to be on his farm, safe and sound. If this blows up - Natasha's heart contracts at the possibilities. Laura, the kids - what will she tell them? How will she face them?

When it comes to that, what about the rest? How will she answer Steve, Thor, Tony, Bruce - how will she make her apologies to them, tell them she's sorry she's ruined their lives? There are people beyond her team that will weigh on her mind - Pepper Potts, Jane Foster, hell, even Sam Wilson. And _James_ \- how can she tell him, beg him, go down on her knees for him to see that she's so, so sorry she's destroyed his life for the second time?

Natasha tries and fails to search for confidence within her, within _James_. She swallows her fear, doesn't let it show on her face.

Her voice is convincing when she says, "It won't."

A second later, Bruce nods and tucks the clipboard under his arm. The questioning is wrapping up. They exchange a few more words before Bruce leaves, making sure the door slides shut completely before turning to them. Steve steps forward, a nonverbal request for report despite the fact that they've all had a live feed of what went on in the room.

"They seem convinced I can only treat him here." Bruce offers, taking off his glasses. "I've said that I can't abandon my work here, and Stark Tower is best equipped to handle his medical needs." He lets out a small sigh and looks back to the one-way mirror. The agents are carefully approaching James, stationing the Strike Team guys around them. "If he goes along with it, I think we'll be safe."

"Isn't that the million dollar question," Tony says.

Natasha is barely listening. Heart in her throat, she watches the agents sit down. Kent speaks first.

* * *

The first words James speaks since he came to the Tower to someone who isn't Natasha are, "Natasha Romanov is my handler."

Natasha watches with a strange mixture of surprise, exasperation, and jubilation. This is the smallest ray of hope that's cracking through the despair surrounding them. But she doesn't let any of it show on her face - overconfidence is a fool's job, and they're only a few seconds in. The agents have gone in straight to attack him where he might not be prepared - that is, Natasha and the Avengers, instead of questioning him about his arrival at the Tower. They know what they're doing - and what they're doing is dangerous.

The others (minus Clint, who's just watching with a dry look on his face) aren't so good at hiding their surprise. Tony's mouth is hanging right open, and Bruce's eyes are wide. Steve blinks, but the stony look hasn't left it's place on his face, and Natasha doubts it will go away until the agents do.

In the room, the agents look just as surprised. Evidently they had gathered, from their snooping around, that James is a disorientated, incapacitated war criminal who is being smothered by the Avengers' overprotectiveness, and had probably assumed that James is a little more than a limp noodle currently. Natasha shrugs at this. It's somewhat true, but they don't know him like she does - like they are all starting to.

James sits up slowly on his bed, posture weak enough to show his temporary disabilities, but strong enough to indicate mild awareness. He raises a puzzled eyebrow at the woman and man who are exchanging a look. "Is something wrong?"

"I apologize, no." Kent is first to react. "Did you say Natasha Romanov is your _handler_?"

She gestures with her hand as she speaks, shifting in her seat. It is all meant to be a distraction. James takes the bait convincingly enough, and Natasha watches the man immediately, and a little discreetly, taps on his phone.

"Well, yes." James scratches his face, unconcerned and a little puzzled. "She's been helping me adjust to this whole..." He waves around the room.

"Why her?" Kent asks swiftly. "Why not, say, Captain America, your best friend?"

James does not react even a little bit to this bait. He gives her a shrug. "She speaks Russian."

"I'm sorry?"

"Sometimes I... get flashbacks. Dr. Banner told me you call it PTSD." James gives a one-shouldered, sad little shrug. His voice is weak and heavy with sadness. "They didn't have that back in... my time, but, well. It explains a lot." He sounds sad and pathetic enough that Natasha begins to wonder if its real. Then she watches the tension drain out of the woman's frame and shakes her head. James hasn't lost one bit of his tricks.

"Think she bought it?" Natasha murmurs to Clint.

"So the language helps you?" Kent's voice is considerably sympathetic.

"Give that man an Oscar," Clint snorts disbelievingly beside her.

James nods slowly, not overselling it. "I guess it's a... A kind of a link? Dr. Banner knows better, I'm sorry," He shakes his head, portraying agitation, "I just know it helps."

"Of course," Kent replies immediately. Soothing. Natasha half-wants to laugh. "We will be consulting with Dr. Banner shortly."

Behind the screen, Bruce sighs. "Great."

Boone beside her puts his phone away, sitting up straight. His posture indicates business. "You claimed that former Agent Romanov is your handler. We have no such records in our system."

James blinks, shakes his head. "I... I didn't know a better word for it. I'm sorry." He frowns a little at his hands. "Back when I was... used... by HYDRA, I - that's what they were called."

"We'll follow up on that later." Kent says.

"What other duties is former Agent Romanov carrying out as your, for the lack of a better word, handler?" Boone continues briskly. Natasha frowns. Kent seems to be taking in James' act quite well, but Boone presents a problem. James can do well enough playing on Kent's maternal instincts, but he has to find a way to win over the man.

"She..." He looks down, thinking. The pause stretches long enough that Steve shifts, glancing at Natasha worriedly.

"Relax," she says in a low voice. "He's got this." Natasha almost means it.

"I'm behind on a lot of things," James says slowly, looking down at his hands. "She helps me catch up." Boone prompts him with a hand. "Like culture, current events. History, mostly. What I've missed since I came back."

What a liar, Natasha thinks, watching him stumble through his words like the incapacitated person he's supposed to be. Her thoughts are not without some admiration. She suspects she isn't the only one. For one, Tony hasn't said a single word until now.

Boone doesn't look satisfied, and a tendril of discomfort creeps up Natasha's back. He leans forward. "Did she -"

"What I did." James speaks over him. Natasha narrows her eyes. He's staring off into space, eyes gaining an unfocused quality. Oh no. Oh, _no._  Fear forces itself back into Natasha's heart, and she finds her nails digging into her palm. She prays, prays so hard to whatever divine force there is in the world that James does _not_ lose it now, not at the agents, not right now, please not now of all times - he'll be doomed and then there will be _nothing_ Natasha can do to save him.

Suddenly, James' voice is shaking. "Back then. 1943. I helped... I helped in the war. And then I - I -" James' voice breaks and he bows his head.

"Jesus," Bruce says quietly. Natasha turns. He's still wide-eyed. "I told them he gets flashbacks. He's..."

She watches his shoulders shake, then it all fits together. "Playing on it," Natasha confirms, turning back around. Her heart slows down its frenetic pounding. Steve leans forward with his palms on the sill, head dropping down in relief.

Boone leans back in his chair, discomfort written all over his face. James can't win him over with a sad tale, so he'll throw Boone off with tears, make him remember that James is _the_ Sergeant Barnes from their history. Even the Strike Team guys shift in their positions.

Natasha feels grim admiration as she watches him. Never let it be said that the Red Room didn't train their subjects right.

Kent takes over, supplicating. "Do you need Doctor Banner in here?"

"No, no." James shakes his head, turning to the side to (not so covertly) wipe his eyes. "I - I'm fine."

"Well, just a few more questions to wrap this up," Kent says, opening her file. Boone doesn't say anything. "Can you describe how you came to Stark Tower?"

Natasha's lips thin. More of their misdirecting, sneaky questions, trying to catch him giving them a different story.

James, however, is on top of his game. "I didn't. From what I remember, Steve Rogers - and this... other guy, I forget his name. They were trying to find me. But I was on their tail. One day, I . . ."

He goes on to describe the events of that day, following, Natasha notices, the pattern in the story she had given to Hawley, but in simpler, shorter words.

"That was only half as scary as Natasha," Tony comments. There's relief in his voice, relief that's beginning to dawn on all of them slowly. "If this goes over -" Suddenly, Tony blinks, eyes narrowing.

"What is it?" Steve asks urgently. Tony's evidently getting something on his comms, possibly from JARVIS.

"Oh fuck this." Tony mutters, just as their earpieces crackle collectively.

" _My friends_ ," Thor announces, voice booming over their comms, " _I have returned._ "

Natasha's lips part. They all glance sharply to the agents inside the room, and then back to each other.

"There's more." Tony curses again.

Thor adds, a little secretively, " _With friends._ "

Natasha meets Clint's _oh shit_ gaze. She knows she has something similar on her expression, too.

Steve and Bruce seem too stunned to say or do anything. Clint turns urgently. "Shit, don't tell me. The Warriors -"

"Three? Yep." Tony passes a hand over his face. "They're all on the roof."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 10 preview: 
> 
> "Bucky," Steve says quietly.
> 
> She holds her breath.
> 
> "Steve."


	10. resolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry to everyone for the long wait! 
> 
> Quick recap: in the previous chapter, the Council gets wind of what's going on and Nat gets arrested, she handles it as she always does but now the Avengers and Bucky are under investigation. Bucky surprises everyone by playing along perfectly, but the Avengers are still not off the hook on their status. Amidst this tension, Thor suddenly returns with the Warriors Three and the Tesseract. With the Council agents and the Asgardians, who have no idea of the circumstances involved, all under the same roof, the tension escalates.

Immediately, Steve dispatches Clint to scope out the situation. The first, obvious reason being Clint is the only one they can spare, seeing as how the Council is under the impression that he's MIA on his farm, but also because Clint actually has firsthand experience dealing with the Asgardians from New Mexico.

"Get a read on them," Steve says as Clint moves to the air vent. "Thor sounds shifty and I don't like it."

"And for god's sake keep them up there," Tony adds fervently. "If they come down here nothing we can do or say will prevent an arrest tonight."

The very thought sends a chill down Natasha's spine.

"Oh and Clint -" Bruce calls out just before Clint hoists himself upwards. " - if they've got the - the _you know what_ \- make sure it's in a stable position, no weird temperatures."

Right, Natasha thinks, the last thing they need is an unstable Tesseract. Although if the thing went off and killed them all that would definitely be an easier experience collectively. She shakes her head. Fury would use the cube to bring her back to life, just to murder her again. God if he _knew_ what Natasha is doing...

"Okay guys," Clint mutters, and up he went. "No pressure," he mumbles as he goes, the words echoing through the vents.

Natasha lets the guys do the warnings, having kept her eyes on James and the agents inside. They're still talking, taking down James' statement, although it looks like they're about to wrap it up now.

"Okay." She turns to face them. "Nice and easy. They're going to go back now, and we're going to smile and send them off. Okay?" She looks around. Steve looks appropriately determined, Bruce is looking a little queasy, and Tony... "Tony! Game face on."

"I'm sorry Natasha, I'm just fending off a heart attack from these _Council_ _members_ and _Asgardians_ under my roof at the _same_ time." Tony says, very sarcastically. "Don't mind me."

"Bruce, don't listen to him," Steve orders. Bruce looks positively uneasy.

Bruce shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts, and points. "They're coming."

"JARVIS," Tony says sharply, and the one-way mirror becomes a painting again. Natasha is already arranging herself on the sofa beside Bruce, and Tony slumps against the wall, looking extremely bored and irritated. Steve opts to remain standing, arms folded, as the agents exit the room.

"All done?" Steve says, sounding appropriately polite and tired. Natasha idly wonders when they became so good at acting.

Kent nods. "His statement has been recorded. As per our discussion..." She glances at Boone.

" _Guys._ " Clint comes on their comms, and sounds terribly uncomfortable. " _We've got a huge problem._ "

Natasha, Steve, Tony, and Bruce barely blink.

"Dr. Banner seems to think it best if Sergeant Barnes is treated here," Boone is saying. "And based off Sergeant Barnes' medical record, ..."

" _The Asgardians think they're here officially._ " Clint hisses. Natasha thinks it sounds like he's saying it through a forced smile. " _Thor had to twist the truth a little. They think the government's in on this._ "

Steve's jaw clenches.

Kent holds up a placating hand. "We understand, Captain, that he is in great mental distress. An appeal can be made to the Council to put off his hearing date."

" _They want to see you guys_ ," Clint adds. _"Like, pronto. God this is fucked._ "

Natasha and Steve exchange a sharp, fleeting look.

"So he stays here?" Steve practically demands.

Boone and Kent exchange a careful look.

"Look agents, it's 3 in the morning," Tony starts irritatedly.

"Meaning we're all very tired." Natasha cuts in with a small, apologetic smile. "We'd appreciate if you could just speed up this process so we can all go to bed."

 _Spit it out,_ Natasha doesn't say. She can see Steve's clenched fists, and wonders how long this calm of hers will last. The tension is wrecking havoc on her mind, and she suspects the longer the agents dawdle, the higher chance it is for any one of them to break their cover. She isn't worried much about Bruce, but Tony or Steve would be competing for the first one to snap.

Not to mention the Asgardians...

"We can clear Sergeant James to stay here." Boone says briskly. Natasha doesn't move, there must be a catch. "But we have not yet investigated the necessity for your presence here."

It takes Natasha a while to discern the meaning behind his words - perhaps her lie isn't a lie, she really is tired after all.

"You're saying we're under investigation?" Bruce says slowly.

"Don't mistake my words Doctor Banner. Technically, everyone here is still under investigation," Boone says sharply. "We have only so far confirmed Sergeant Barnes' mental health and are allowing him to stay here. The charges against him are still pending."

"But Mr. Stark is right." Kent adds, slightly sympathetic. Natasha lifts an eyebrow. It seems James has mellowed her out.

"I am always right," Tony states loudly.

"It _is_ 3 in the morning, however we have a job to complete." Kent ignores him. "We need to question everyone involved before we can deem it appropriate for Sergeant Barnes to be here."

They all hesitate.

" _Guys._ " Clint hisses on their comms. " _What are we doing?_ "

Steve's eyes flick to Natasha, seeing the open agreement on her face, and nods. "I understand. Let's get this done. Who'd you like to question first?"

* * *

It's a numbers game, Natasha muses vaguely, this godforsaken night is a numbers game. What are the chances of Thor returning on the same night she gets arrested? What are the chances of Thor running his own lie against his governing people, the way she is now?

She surreptitiously cracks the knuckles on her right hand. Natasha has never been religious, but she's praying that the numbers will be in their favor tonight.

"Well, as they say in the olden days - too bad," Tony says.

And maybe for Tony to acquire a brain to mouth filter. Natasha glances at Steve, but his face is impassive. Bruce shifts uncomfortably.

"Mr. Stark." Kent starts, a hint of exasperation cracking her professional facade.

Tony shrugs. "Agents, I don't know what you want me to say. It's very late, and my office opens at 9 in the morning anyway. I cannot allow you access to my offices," he takes on an obnoxiously plaintive voice - Natasha doesn't even know how he does that. "And neither can I allow you the use of the floors above, seeing as how I live there and all. Which leaves us with the rooms on this floor, or the pavement outside." He sticks his hands in his pocket and shrugs benignly. "You pick."

Natasha has to admit that she can't tell if Tony's putting up an impeccable act, or he really is that annoyed. Her money's on the latter. It's probably because she knows him to a certain level, but Natasha can practically smell the antsiness off of him. It seems to keep Bruce calm by contrast, though, so she isn't complaining. Who can blame Tony, anyway? Not even Natasha had been able to predict this shitfest.

"Very well." Boone says.

They are hustled off into the rooms Tony had pointed out immediately. This time, the Strike Team guys separate them, with one accompanying each one as Kent and Boone lead Steve into the room. Natasha can hear Tony snarking at them as they go. She turns to follow her own Strike Team guy, and is confronted with Bruce and another, slightly fidgety Strike Team member.

"Don't worry son," Bruce says mildly, "I'm not gonna lose it on you."

Natasha thinks the guy looks rather green as he redirects Bruce to another room. She meets Bruce's gaze and finds her feelings mirrored in them - grim, grim, grim.

They go into one of Tony's rooms. Natasha has no idea what he has told them, because hours ago, before she got arrested at the gala, none of these rooms had existed. The entire place had been a huge, open space created around a dip in the ground, where the sofas surround the coffee table. Everything is missing now, but Natasha suspects she is in the northeast corner of the lounge.

She stops counting the minutes after 10 minutes go by. The Strike guy stands with his back to the door and keeps his eyes on the wall behind her, and Natasha is _dying_ to speak to Clint, dying to know just what the hell is going on. Because with every passing minute, Natasha can almost feel the icy fingers of fear wrap itself snugly around her throat, her hands, her body, thinking about the endless ways this night will go wrong: the agents call their bluff, the Asgardians call their bluff, and _chert voz'mi_ what the hell is she going to do?

What on earth can Natasha do?

She's doomed them all.

They had been right. The Tesseract is a terribly genius idea and Natasha should have focused on the former. How can she be so... so... selfish? Putting James above everyone else just because she has a blood debt that she can never repay, never ever make apologies for - Clint has _children_. Thor and Tony are in _love_ , and Bruce just wants to be left in peace. And Steve... _James..._

Natasha fights against the instinct screaming at her to take the Strike Team guy out and get out of this room. She realizes her hands are shaking.

She sits there for another twenty minutes. Just waiting.

"Hope this goes on your overtime." Natasha says out loud.

The Strike guy looks at her, then away.

"You know when I was at SHIELD," Natasha starts, relaxing her shoulders, "We didn't use Strike Team for investigations like this."

"Well, there isn't a SHIELD anymore." He abruptly looks like he regrets speaking, and fixes his eyes firmly on the wall behind Natasha.

She doesn't let that deter her. "True." Natasha shrugs. "I suppose that puts you under an entirely different jurisdiction."

He doesn't even look at her this time. Natasha feels the beginning of a feral grin, restless and cagey, and tamps it away.

"Were you given a choice?" Natasha wonders out loud. "Or did they just relocate the whole lot to the Council?" Natasha can see his jaw visibly clenching. "So, no choice, then."

This is interesting to consider. Natasha would have assumed that the Strike Team guys had been given an option of retirement or simply be out of a job. It looks like the Council is watching their back more than most these days.

"Think they'll have a slot open for me?" Natasha muses vaguely.

He snorts.

Natasha mentally perks up. This is _interesting_ indeed.

"I'll take that as a no," she says carefully.

"You're a traitor." He says, finally looking at her. "You leaked government secrets."

Natasha shrugs. This is old news to her. "If I was a criminal I'd be behind bars, not here distracting you from doing your job -" He double-takes, spluttering. " - And for that matter, I wouldn't be out here at all."

He scowls, then crosses his arms and looks over her head. Natasha gives up her little game. It has been a simple seven minutes.

* * *

" _Guys, it_ _'s been half an hour._ _I don't think I can stall any longer._ "

Clint's words are so, so unwelcome, especially when Natasha is in a position to do absolutely nothing, under the watchful eye of the Strike Guy. Nobody answers Clint on the comms, which means they're all under the same supervision as Natasha. She grits her teeth.

" _I've tried sending them to the guestrooms, but they're here on strict conditions._ " Clint is speaking quietly and steadily. He's probably hiding somewhere, speaking to them. Just ten floors away from Natasha and the agents. The thought makes her swallow. " _Apparently Thor's dad set rules. The warriors have to be around the cube always. And they've got a time limit of about a day of Asgard time, which Thor says is about a few hours here._ "

Natasha calmly relaxes in her seat, but her emotions are anything but. Great. Wonderful. More time limits. More constraints. It felt to Natasha like the universe itself is working to destroy their lives.

" _Ooo_ kay," Clint says after a moment of silence, " _I'm guessing this means everyone's tied up. The soonest any one of you is done, get to the roof. Fuck knows I need it._ " He lets out a sharp exhale. " _Thor's helping me distract 'em. I've told them you're all in a meeting downstairs. I'd say we have an hour._ "

The door opens sharply. Boone is there, looking a little weary. "Former Agent Romanoff."

Natasha sits up, alert and ready to get this blasted thing over with. "Go on, Agent Boone."

He slides into the seat opposite hers and opens his file. Natasha's fingers are aching, her limbs feel like they are itching for movement, for _something_ so he would _hurry up_ and finish this before the Asgardians leave. Or worse.

Boone opens his mouth.

"On the night of the capture of James Buchanan Barnes by Captain Rogers and one Sam Wilson, where were you and what were you doing . . ."

* * *

There's a sharp intake of breath over their comms. " _They want to come down._ "

 _No!_ Natasha wants to scream.

"And have you had any personal contact with Barnes since his arrival?" Boone asks.

" _Fuck,_ " Clint swears, " _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ "

"Yes," Natasha answers. "Minimal contact."

"Explain this."

Natasha's heart is beating so fast she thinks it will explode. "Well," she says carefully, highly aware that her voice is shaking just the tiniest bit. She reaches up and brushes her hair - and presses her comms. "I would go to him."

Boone waits, an impatient look on his face. "And?"

" _Now?_ " Clint demands. " _Just me and Thor?_ "

"I would try my best," Natasha says calmly and drops her hand. "To educate him. To bring him up to speed on, well, on what's happened. And what's going to happen."

" _Fucking hell_ ," Clint says, then the line goes dead.

"Explain further."

Natasha swallows down a scream of impatience. Careful to only fill in the blanks James had drawn for them, she conjures up visits of learning where she tells him about the world post-war. "I used books and TV, and he was receptive . . ."

* * *

Finally, _finally_ Boone shuts his god damned file and stands up. "Thank you, former agent Romanoff. We can join the others now."

Natasha almost collapses in relief, and its all she can do to keep herself from pushing him and the Strike guy out of the way, and sprinting out of the room. For the first time in a very long time, she feels as if she has zero control over everything, from the current situation to Asgardians illegally coming to Earth and over her own god damned body. She thinks its a miracle none of them notice how agitated she feels, because her body feels like her blood is bubbling and boiling and Natasha is going to break into a run at any minute -!

"Finally!" Tony stands up from the sofas. Bruce and Steve are there, too, with mirroring expressions of controlled agitation, and so is Agent Kent and the remaining Strike Team guys. They had saved Natasha for last.

Tony, however, freely expresses his testiness. He is glaring. "Are we done here, Agents? Because I've about had it up to here -"

"We're just tired," Bruce interrupts calmly yet with a tinge of weariness that shuts Tony up at once.

"Almost," Boone says, unbothered. "I will report my findings to the Council, and so will Agent Kent. We'll wait for the results -"

Natasha can almost predict the forthcoming explosion from Tony, and so she steps forward. "Right now, Agent Boone? How long will that -"

"None of you seem to be understanding the situation at hand." Boone seems to have lost his patience, turning to Natasha with a full-on glare. "You are being charged of harboring a _criminal_. Now, we've determined that the accused can only get the best medical assistance in Stark Tower, so he may stay here - but none of you are off the hook yet. Until I receive orders from the Council on what to do, consider yourselves to be charged with the crime."

Kent speaks up, evident embarrassment for her partner on her face. "It's protocol," she says, glancing at Steve. "Out of respect for your team's services to the Council, we are keeping this under wraps. But the outcome hasn't been determined yet."

"We understand." Natasha says, patient and trying to calm them down. She's almost angry at everyone - an irrational emotion, but Natasha's emotions aren't exactly in check right now. "We'll just wait."

"Yes," Boone snaps, then he walks out of the room. Agent Kent, after an apologetic look, orders the Strike Team guys to be on alert before following her partner outside.

"Mam, you need to take a seat," one of them tells Natasha.

Natasha contains the murderous glare she can _feel_ creating itself on her face, and takes a seat opposite Bruce. He looks at her, an expression of calm tiredness on his face, and nods slowly. After a second, Tony throws himself down with a huff. They don't say anything, they don't discuss anything. They can't. All they do is look at each other and try their best to act as casual as they can.

Natasha meets Steve's eyes, and instantly she knows they are both thinking about the same thing. Clint hasn't reported back, and Thor's line is eerily quiet. As long as the roof above their heads stays standing Natasha supposes she can breathe lightly - the Asgardians will surely not waste a single second if they find out they are here illegally. She trusts Thor to persuade them well, and she trusts Clint to lie for them even better. Yet their situation had gone straight to hell in a matter of hours, so who was to say what could happen?

The Council could decide to arrest them anyway.

Natasha closes her eyes. _No, no, no - please, no. Anything but that. After I see him healed._

She will take anything the universe has left to dole out to her, but only _after_ she gets to heal James. Only after.

Tony is cracking his knuckles one by one, and he hasn't stopped fidgeting. Natasha, far from wanting to tell him to knock it off, finds some weirdly placed solace in the methodical _crack crack_ of his fingers.

She tries not to glance at the clock. But her mind knows that it has been three minutes and fifteen seconds since Agents Boone and Kent walked out that door.

Tony moves on to cracking his wrists.

Steve's jaw becomes more and more pronounced by the second.

Five more minutes pass by.

Bruce lets out a slow exhale. The Strike guys' hands go immediately to their guns.

"He's yawning," Tony snaps.

None of them are fool enough to reply him.

Four more minutes. Natasha's limbs are made of stone.

She meets Steve's gaze again - there's pain in his blue eyes, now. They are thinking of the same thing, surely - the Council is taking too long. This isn't good. If they make an arrest -

Natasha tears her gaze away, glancing at Tony and Bruce as she does.

Dear god. She's doomed them all. Her heart feels so, so heavy.

What will they do? If the Council decides to put out a warrant, what _can_ they do? There will be bloodshed. Steve will try to take James run, and Natasha will hold their defense until they're secure. It's the only thing she can do, and it's sort of a poetic justice, if Natasha thinks about it - years ago she had left James to fight for his life while she fled, and tonight she would be fighting for him while _he_ runs. If they decide to do it, if they arrest -

The door opens. Her heart stops. Kent walks in.

"The Council has decided to drop the charges against you temporarily."

Natasha tries not to collapse into a puddle of relief.

"You are allowed to maintain your stay here, and you will not be arrested for now. There will be a trial," Kent says it like she's reciting it. "However, it will take place only after the accused's trial is through."

It's good enough. It's good enough. Natasha can barely breathe.

"The terms of the accused's stay here are this: your team's contact with him will be strictly monitored by the Council. Once your doctor deems him fit enough to stand trial, he will go to court for the crimes that he has been accused of." Kent looks at them. "We'll be sending a representative in the morning, along with a couple Strike Team members for security."

Steve stands up. He looks choked, but his voice is well-controlled. "Thank you, Agent Kent."

She nods at him, then at the Strike Team guys. "We'll show ourselves out."

"Nah," Tony says, evidently relieved and mollified by the results, "I'll walk ya out."

He follows the Strike Guys who leave in a single file line, giving Natasha just the barest of glances as they go. The second the door closes, Steve collapses into his chair again. Bruce lets out a sharp exhale, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Natasha herself takes a minute to close her eyes and just _breathe_ \- the results aren't stellar but they will do, god they will do.

Her eyes snap open and her heart leaps to her throat again. "James." Another thought strikes her. "The Asgardians!"

Steve is on his feet in a flash. "They're with Clint, aren't they?"

"They're on the _roof_." Natasha groans, and the three of them are already moving, out of the door and out of the corridors. "Where the agents and Strike Team can be seen driving _away_."

Steve almost stumbles over his feet. "What do we do?"

His total, unbounded panic clears her mind. "We need to bring them inside. Offer them - offer them liquor. The bar!" Natasha snaps her fingers, as they practically skid to a stop in front of the elevator.

"I'll go. Leave that to me." Bruce is panting a little from their run. Steve begins to protest, but Bruce shakes his head. "That whole interrogation took a lot out of me. And I don't want to be near that cube, Steve. Thor will know how to use it... you don't need me for that."

"Bruce," Natasha says, but he shakes his head again.

His voice is low. "I don't trust myself around that thing."

That settles the entire argument in Natasha's mind. "Take the elevator. Keep them busy." 

"We'll see you as soon as we can. Bruce," Steve grips his forearm as he goes inside the elevator, "Bruce. I really, really appreciate -"

"We don't have time," Bruce cuts him off incredulously. "Go!"

The elevator shuts. Steve and Natasha stare at each other.

"Stairs," they say at the same time, then with the powers the serum has gifted them both with, they take off at a run together.

* * *

The Tesseract is the most luminous, beautiful thing that Natasha has seen in days.

And it hangs there, suspended in mid-air by some Asgardian technology, in front of a bed-bound James Buchanan Barnes, who's staring at it in a slackjawed way that Natasha finds so, so hopeful.

But James, god, James. She wants to punch a wall. He is a husk of the man she once knew, somehow frail and looking like his soul has left his body. The veins on his forehead are permanently bulging and deep, dark blue, and with every breath he takes there's a terrible rattling sound that they all try their best to ignore. She can see now that James had been putting on such a show for the Agents.

Steve and Natasha practically explode into the room to find Thor sitting by James' bedside, and Clint pacing around the room restlessly.

"Where have you been!" Clint yells as soon as they set foot inside. "I was cut off, zero contact, nobody bothered to say a fucking _word_ -"

Steve goes straight away to Thor although his eyes stay on James. "Thor. You know how to use it?"

"I do," Thor says solemnly, then nods at James. "I have told him all that I know regarding the Tesseract."

"What'd you tell the Asgardians?" Natasha asks Clint.

"I don't even remember," he replies. Natasha supposes it's fair enough. She watches Steve kneel by the bed.

"Bucky," he says quietly, "Bucky, you there?"

The door slides open again. Thor had spoken over their comms a minute ago, so Iron Man clunks into the room, but the faceplate is up and on Tony's face is written the entire panic, fear, and weariness that everyone feels.

"We doing this?" he asks, a tinge of excitement in his tone. Natasha supposes that the Tesseract and its wonders are currently outweighing the seriousness of the situation.

However, Tony's innocuous question sobers the mood in the room, as if suddenly, the gravity of what they are about to do has hit them all at once. James temporarily forgotten, they all slowly look at each other, taking it in. Natasha hadn't imagined they could come this far, and yet here they are, attempting to pull off a feat that, if goes wrong, can cause an intergalactic war among other horrors. The nervous tension between the five of them is palpable. Natasha had not even felt this way when they had geared up to fight the Chitauri what feels like years ago. Natasha swallows, hard. Then again. 

But Natasha has come a long way from that.

All of this is for him, she reminds herself, no matter how much her body is balking at the hundreds of ways this could completely backfire, everything Natasha has done so far, she's done for James. Throwing her loyalty to the country she had defected for, for _him_  - she owes him. She owes him her life.

The silence in the room catches up to her. Belatedly, Natasha realizes they are all looking at her. Waiting for an answer, a command, a word to get going. She practically has to force her vocal chords to work. It feels like her body will give out under the stress, injuries and exhaustion any moment now.

"Well." Natasha's voice is hoarse. She sees Steve blink furiously, and clears her throat, nodding at the floating blue cube. "We've come this far. Might as well." She lets out a slow, shaky breath. "Thor?" 

Thor looks the most serious she has ever seen him be. "I must mention," he rumbles, "That I will do the best I can based on the best I know. I am no healer. Merely a fighter."

Steve shakes his head, a blazing expression on his face. "Everything you've done has been more than enough."

Thor manages an acknowledging smile, then he turns to James' bedside again. "May Odin be with us." 

"I'll say," Tony says fervently, and does the sign of the cross. 

"You're an atheist," Clint protests without much bite. 

"Desperate times, Barton." 

"The power of the cube must be contained." Thor kneels as he speaks. "This must be done by myself and Steve." He gestures, and Steve immediately takes his position on the other side of the bed, opposite Thor. Throughout this entire exchange, James had been unfocused, staring at the cube like a moth drawn to a flame, but now he watches them silently, still blinking in an unfocused way. Natasha wants to ask, wants to clarify why, but she doesn't want to interrupt Thor. A much larger part of her is just yearning for this entire thing to be over. 

Thor continues with his instructions. "Using some of my powers, we will attempt to redirect it into our friend Barnes. I need Steve to hold the cube in place." He indicates the metal plate upon which the Tesseract sat, floating. "Tony, my friend - you are here to manage the situation in case it's power grows too big for me to contain."

Tony opens his mouth, then closes it. "In other words..."

"Your repulsor blasts are the only thing strong enough to clear us from the cube," Thor shrugs. "We will not use the cube for more than a minute. It is too powerful. If I don't stop myself, you must."

"Right," Tony mutters, looking completely unconvinced.

And because no one will actually say it, Steve steps up, as usual. "Nat and Clint, you're on standby in case things go wrong here." 

"Could they?" 

All of them turn, as a unit, to James. His voice had been small, but they heard it crystal clear. 

"Could they go wrong?" He murmurs - to Steve, Natasha realizes. 

All of Steve's desperation seems to collapse in his following three words: "I don't know, Buck." 

James seems to consider this for a brief second. "I'm sorry." 

Steve's face crumples. He doesn't say a word, opting to stare blindly at Thor while his eyes pooled and his Adam's apple shivered. James continues to stare at Steve, and Natasha will be damned, but there's a sadness in his gaze that she has never seen before. 

Then, he is looking at Natasha. 

"I came here to see you," James tells her.

Natasha has her theories, and they are all true. 

"I know." She says, heart wrenching in her chest. She can't bear to look at him like that a second longer, so she turns. "Let's get going. Now." 

Thor looks at James, who, after a beat, lifts a shoulder at him. 

"Very well. Good luck, my friend." 

Tony's faceplate goes down. Clint's hands get busy, checking his guns and knives, and Natasha stays rooted to her spot. She knows there's one gun in her back pocket, but she also knows that if it goes completely to hell, and what comes out is not James but the Soldier, he can, and will, be killed in a minute.

Thor takes a deep breath. "Steven, hold fast to the plate. Everyone else do not be alarmed. I am about to summon a little lightning."

* * *

 

Natasha has never seen lightning up close.

She has seen it, of course, when they go into battle with Thor, but it's always from a distance, and usually she is far too busy fighting or doing her job to be ogling the electricity. But today she gets a private show, up close and personal. It is Thor's second hand and he is a natural at it. She can't tell if the lightning is actually hurting Steve, but his eyes are narrowed in focus. 

"Be ready." Thor's voice echoes like a hundred voices speaking at once. "In three. Two. One."

Natasha's nails dig  _deep_ into her palm. 

The lightning gather into one crackling rod, then all at once they surge through the Tesseract and into James, and the second the lightning hits the cube, a wave of muted electricity sweeps over all of them with the force of a fire hydrant. Natasha's eyes close on their own, feeling the wave prick her skin painfully, even her hair, and she hears Steve let out a grunt, and she fights, with her hands in front of her face, to open her eyes - Thor is calm, eyes closed, and Steve is holding onto the plate with all of his might. 

Behind her, Tony stands, solid and rooted in his suit that somehow withstands the lightning. Clint is standing with his feet far apart, eyes scrunched up against the still-crackling waves, staring hard at the three of them. 

And James - 

Natasha fights back a thud of fear in her heart. And James is lost, completely engulfed in the blue of the Tesseract. Her mind has lost count. Thor had said one minute. Do they wait one minute? Has it been one minute? Why hasn't Steve opened his eyes? Why can't she see James? Why isn't Thor moving? Why - 

"Tony!" Clint barks. "Get them off, now!" 

His sharp eyes had seen something Natasha couldn't. 

"Tony, now!" Clint shouts over the increasing din of the lightning and cube combined. He puts a hand on Natasha's shoulder and drags her to the side.

Tony sets his feet, and raises his hands. The familiar sound of his repulsors winding up is almost muted in the room. And then he fires. The blasts hit both Steve and Thor at the same time, and then everything goes into chaos. 

Tony's repulsor beams, the lightning, and the cube create a wave of energy that wipes out the lights and the windows in one striking motion. Natasha and Clint throw themselves to the ground, hands covering their heads automatically, and at once. The sound of glass shattering is almost deafening, and there's a louder, duller  _clunk_ right in front of them. 

Natasha can't see. The dust is too thick, and her ears are ringing. Beside her, Clint is kneeling, hands over his ears. The ringing doesn't subside, and Natasha can't clear the air in front of her eyes. It's too - it's too smoky, Natasha realizes, there is smoke in the room. 

Very slowly, the ringing in her ears lessen, and she can hear Tony almost yelling, a few feet in front of her. 

"JARVIS," he is saying, "JARVIS, I need air in here. Activate the fans! We need - we need to clear out the smoke. And we need fucking lights!" 

Natasha wills with all the might she has, to crouch her way in the dark to Tony. There's a larger pane of glass and iron lying beside them - Tony must have shielded her and Clint with his armor. 

She speaks through the ringing. "Tony, Tony! Are you good?"

"Yes. Yeah, just can't see a damn thing." His armor-amplified voice replies, before the faceplate comes up and Tony yanks the helmet off his head. "You? Barton?" 

"Will be okay in a sec," Natasha replies, glancing back at Clint. They all turn towards the only source of light in the room. 

The Tesseract's glow cannot be dimmed even by the darkness and smoke. Using that as a frame of reference, Natasha gingerly feels the floor for broken shards of glass before getting to her feet. 

Her mind is strangely blank as she gazes at the dim smokiness, just waiting for something to happen. 

"Nat." Clint whispers. His hand grips her shoulder. 

Then they hear it. The all-too-familiar sound of Thor winding up his hammer, the way they've seen him do plenty of times, and the sound just gets louder and louder, and Natasha realizes he's clearing the air. The smoke is thick and hazy, but slowly it bends to the Mjolnir.

Slowly, slowly, the smoke dissipates until they can see Thor standing tall and proud, his hammer a blur in his hands. 

And then, illuminated by the glaring blue of the Tesseract, there is Steve. Still kneeling beside James, and there are cuts on his face and arms - but he is focused on one thing only. 

The smoke shifts, and there is James, frazzled and eyes wide open.

Thor stops winding his hammer, then very gingerly taps something on the metal plating beneath the Tesseract that bundles up into a large, steel-looking box around the cube, dropping immediately into Thor's waiting hands. 

He sets the cube aside very carefully, then says, "It is done." 

Natasha's heart is beating so hard and so loudly it's a wonder they haven't said anything. She can't bring herself to do anything more than stare, and wait. 

Then, Steve leans forwards. 

"Bucky," he says quietly. 

Natasha holds her breath. Nobody says anything, and there's not a single movement in the room for a couple of moments. They could all have been carved from marble. 

Then, just before despair and panic can properly set itself in Natasha, there's some rustling. 

James says, " _Steve_."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've reached the end, my lovelies.
> 
> This chapter is effectively the last part of this story. The next will be an epilogue (thus the lack of next chapter preview) to tie things up. I promise it won't take as long! (ha ha.)
> 
> Did you like it? Do you want to throw potatoes at me for leaving this to dry for so long?


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